whey
/hweɪ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.05 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Little Miss Muffet, She sat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey; There came a little spider, Who sat down beside her, And frighted Miss Muffet away."
- "{...} if I wished any blessing in the world, it was to find him a worthy object of pride; and I’m bitterly disappointed with the whey-faced, whining wretch!"
- "He swayed over to the door, peered out, shouted "whey!" and came back, looking severe."
- "somebody who was more or less to their senses, shouted... ' Whey! ... Had on lads!' and everybody was trying to get wocken up and sorted out."
- "... apart from Max, who rode his pallet like a surfboard with a huge grin plastered across his face. “Wheyyyyyyy!” Max yelled with delight."
- "Several drunken men shouted from the corner. “Wheyyyy, showtime! Go on, go on!”"
Etymology
From Middle English whey, wheye, whei, from Old English hwǣġ, hwæiġ, hwæġ, hweġ (“whey”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwaij (“whey”) (cognate with Saterland Frisian Waai, Woaie, West Frisian waai, Dutch wei, Low German Wei, German Low German Wei), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *kʷey- (“to pile up, build”) (compare Old Church Slavonic чинъ (činŭ, “order”), Ancient Greek ποιέω (poiéō, “to pile up, make”), Sanskrit कय (káya, “every one”)).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: whey, hwǣġ, *hwaij, *kʷey-
Usage
- Uncountable
- British usage
- Dated