oy vey
/ɔɪ̯ veɪ̯/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.48 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Alternatively, some view "oy vey" as being entirely Yiddish (Judeo-German) in origin."
- "I suppose that’s not surprising, given the spiritual milieu in which I grew up. My mother gasped in sorrow at any news of a bombing in Israel and appropriately “oy veyed” when a Jew was accused of a crime, but she couldn’t tell you what the Shabbat blessing meant."
Etymology
Borrowed from Yiddish אוי וויי (oy vey, literally “oh woe”), from Middle High German ōwē, from ō + wē, the latter being from Old High German wē, from Proto-Germanic *wai, from Proto-Indo-European *wai. Cognate with German o weh, Dutch oh wee, Latin vae, and Esperanto ho ve.