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.’
- ‘In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, English hoys plied a trade between London and the north Kent coast.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘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.’
Origin
Middle English: from Middle Dutch hoei, of unknown origin.
Pronunciation
verb
[with object]Australian, Northern Englishinformal
Throw.
- ‘So he hoyed it in a well. So he threw it down a well.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘1970's camping cavers had adopted the Dounreay technique for disposing of their rubbish - they'd hoyed it all down a deep shaft.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘Not wanting anyone to see such a tiddler he hoyed it overboard.’
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.
