ye
/jiː/pronoun, interjection, noun
ye is spelled Y-E: 2 letters and one syllable. It appears 18 times per million words in written English, the 4,667th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a pronoun, ye means “You (the people being addressed)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in ye?
| Letters | 2: Y-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 18 times per million words; the 4,667th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is ye?
Ye appears 18 times per million words in written English, the 4,667th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce ye?
- US /jiː/
- US [jɪi]
- US [ji(ː)]
As an article (“The”): /jiː/.
As an interjection (“Yes, yeah”): /jə/, [jɐ], [jɪ].
Ye has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-ye.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with ye
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Also written: yee.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with ye?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as ye from its last stressed vowel (/i/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of ye
- yee
- yͤ
- yes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does ye mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
pronoun
- 1
IrelandYou (the people being addressed).
- 2
archaicYou (the singular person being addressed).
interjection
- 1
slangYes, yeah.
noun
- 1
The Cyrillic letter Е, е, featured in various Slavic and Turkic languages.
article
- 1
archaicThe.
Ye Olde Medicine Shoppe
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Ye in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Е:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Portuguese | iê |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does ye come from?
From Middle English ye, ȝe, from Old English ġē (“ye”), the nominative case of the second-person plural personal pronoun, from Proto-West Germanic *jiʀ, from Proto-Germanic *jīz, a North-West variant of Proto-Germanic *jūz (“ye”), from Proto-Indo-European *yúHs (“ye”), plural of *túh₂. Cognate with Scots ye (“ye”), Saterland Frisian jie, Dutch gij, ge, jij, je (“ye”), Low German ji, jie (“ye”), German ihr (“ye”), Danish and Swedish I (“ye”), Icelandic ér (“ye”), Latvian jūs (“ye”), Sanskrit यूयम् (yūyám, “ye”). See also you.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).