yew
/ju/noun, adjective, pronoun
yew is spelled Y-E-W: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 27,820th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, yew means “A species of coniferous tree, Taxus baccata, with dark-green flat needle-like leaves and seeds bearing red arils, native to western, central and…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of yew is yews.
How many letters and syllables are in yew?
| Letters | 3: Y-E-W |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.1 times per million words; the 27,820th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Rhymes with | |
| 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 common is yew?
Yew appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 27,820th 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 yew?
- UK /juː/
- British /jʉw/
- US /ju/
Yew 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-uk-you.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Back_ache-you.wav, En-us-you.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with yew
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: eau, ewe, u (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 yew?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as yew from its last stressed vowel (/u/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: wye, wey.
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 yew
- yews plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does yew mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A species of coniferous tree, Taxus baccata, with dark-green flat needle-like leaves and seeds bearing red arils, native to western, central and southern Europe, northwest Africa, northern Iran and southwest Asia.
- 2
Any tree or shrub of the genus Taxus.
- 3
in family Podocarpaceae.
- 4
in family Cephalotaxaceae.
- 5
The wood of such trees.
- 6
A bow for archery, made of yew wood.
adjective
- 1
Made from the wood of the yew tree.
pronoun
- 1
Eye dialect spelling of you.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Yew in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
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 yew come from?
From Middle English ew, from Old English īw, ēow, [both cognates of Welsh yw (“yews”), Irish eo, Old Irish eó respectively]; although the Old English form was conjectured to be from Proto-West Germanic *īhu, from Proto-Germanic *īhwaz (compare Icelandic ýr), masculine variant of *īwō (compare Dutch ijf, German Eibe), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. See also Hittite 𒄑𒂊𒅀𒀭 (eyan, “type of evergreen”), Latgalian īva (“bird cherry”), Lithuanian ievà (“bird cherry”), Russian и́ва (íva, “willow”). Compare typologically Ancient Greek τόξον (tóxon), possibly a cognate of Latin taxus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).