What is the origin of 'sleep tight'?
Read moreOne of the mysteries of the English language finally explained.
exclamation
Used to attract someone's attention.
‘‘Hoy! Look!’’- ‘"Hoy!" shouted Charles, getting out of his seat.’
- ‘He spat out the bread and shouted "Hoy! Hoy!" down at the street.’
noun
mass nounAustralianA game resembling bingo, using playing cards.
- ‘Thursday was pension day and a larger than usual number of visitors frequented the Workers Club, playing the pokies or taking part in a game of Hoy.’
- ‘Why not bring your friends along to a fun morning playing Hoy and then delicious BBQ lunch?’
Origin
Natural exclamation: first recorded in late Middle English.
Pronunciation
noun
historicalA small coastal sailing vessel, typically single-masted.
- ‘Then it was rolled down to the water's edge along a walkway and loaded on to a powder hoy to be ferried to the waiting warship.’
- ‘Sailors of the Hound, blamed by Captain Mustard for running down his timber hoy, admitted that their collier lay so low in the water she could not pass over a shelf in the Thames near Rainham until flood tide.’
- ‘The centrepiece of the gallery will be a three-quarter view full-scale model of a transport hoy, a reproduction of the Foreman's Office, and the quayside along which the boat will be moored.’
- ‘In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, English hoys plied a trade between London and the north Kent coast.’
Origin
Middle English: from Middle Dutch hoei, of unknown origin.
Pronunciation
verb
[WITH OBJECT]Australian, Northern Englishinformal
Throw.
- ‘Simple: take your trainers off, wind your arm up, and get hoying your ‘shoe’ - the pleasing alternative to the game played by all those wizened, pipe-smoking Frenchmen.’
- ‘So he hoyed it in a well. So he threw it down a well.’
- ‘Not wanting anyone to see such a tiddler he hoyed it overboard.’
- ‘1970's camping cavers had adopted the Dounreay technique for disposing of their rubbish - they'd hoyed it all down a deep shaft.’
- ‘If we think there's a possibility that everyone out there would accept it, we take it to a mass meeting which we did the last time and they hoyed it out.’
hurl, smash, crash, slam, throw, toss, fling, pitch, cast, lob, launch, flip, catapult, shy, aim, direct, project, propel, send, bowlView synonyms
Origin
Mid 19th century: of unknown origin.
