yea
/jeɪ/adverb, interjection, noun
yea is spelled Y-E-A. The wrong spelling people search most is yeay: about 60 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 46 of all searches for the word. Yea is an adverb meaning “Yes, indeed”.
How many letters and syllables are in yea?
| Letters | 3: Y-E-A |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 18 times per million words; the 4,589th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, yeay, about 60 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
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 do you spell yea?
Yea is spelled Y-E-A. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 46 of the searches for yea in either form.
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). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is yea?
Yea appears 18 times per million words in written English, the 4,589th 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 yea?
- /jeɪ/
- /jiː/
- /jiː/
Yea 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-yea.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with yea
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: yay (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with yea?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as yea.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: aye.
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 yea
- yeas plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does yea mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adverb
- 1
datedYes, indeed.
- 2
datedThus, so (now often accompanied by a hand gesture by way of measurement).
conjunction
- 1
archaicdatedOr even, or more like, nay. Introduces a stronger and more appropriate expression than the preceding one.
interjection
- 1
USdatedYeah, right, yes.
noun
- 1
datedAn affirmative vote, usually but not always spoken
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Where does yea come from?
From Middle English ye, ȝea, ya, ȝa, from Old English ġēa, iā (“yea, yes”), from Proto-West Germanic *jā. The modern pronunciation shows an irregular development of Early Modern English /ɛː/ to /eɪ/ in the standard language, probably from association with the antonym nay.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).