way
/weɪ/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 6.01 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Example Sentences
- "Do you know the way to the airport? Come this way and I'll show you a shortcut."
- "We lied our way through the debriefing."
- "The way seems difficult, and steep to scale."
- "the season and ways very improper for his Majesty's forces to march so great a distance"
- "Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair."
- "I was on my way to the door, but all at once, through the fog in my head, I began to sight one reef that I hadn't paid any attention to afore."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *wegaz Proto-West Germanic *weg Old English weġ Middle English wey English way From Middle English way, wey, from Old English weġ, from Proto-West Germanic *weg, from Proto-Germanic *wegaz, from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ-. Doublet of voe and possibly via. Cognates Cognate with North Frisian wai, wäi (“way”), Saterland Frisian Wai (“way”), West Frisian wei (“road; way”), Central Franconian Wääch (“way”), Cimbrian bege, bèg (“way”), Dutch weg (“way”), German, Low German Weg (“way”), Limburgish waeg (“way”), Luxembourgish Wee (“way”), Mòcheno be (“way”), Yiddish וועג (veg, “way”), Danish vej (“way”), Faroese and Icelandic vegur (“way”), Norwegian Bokmål veg, vei (“way”), Norwegian Nynorsk veg (“way”), Swedish väg (“way”), Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌲𐍃 (wigs, “path; road”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /weɪ/
- British English: /weɪ/
Usage
- Uncountable
- American usage
- Slang
- Obsolete
- Informal