oyez

Meanings

interjection

alternative oyes

Hear ye. Attend. (Called by public criers or in court usually three times to secure silence or attentiveness).
“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The Banquet is now ready!” called the two Beef Eaters, and in no time at all Palmer Cox’s resourceful Brownies had found a seat for every guest.
1924, Anne Carroll Moore, chapter IX, in Nicholas, A Manhattan Christmas Story, page 111

nounoyez (plural oyezes)

plural oyezes · alternative oyes

A cry of oyez.

verboyez (no third-person singular simple present, no present participle, no simple past or past participle)

alternative oyes

no pastno present participleparticiplepastraretransitiveTo proclaim with a cry of oyez.
I truſte you make no queſtion about thoſe dull pated pennifathers, that in ſuch dudgen ſcorne reiected him, drunck deep of the ſowre cup of repentance for it, when the high flight of his lines in common brute was ooyeſſed.
1599, [Thomas] Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, […], London: […] [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and C[uthbert] B[urby] […], →OCLC, page 3

Origin

Latinaudīre
Old Frenchoyez
Middle Englishoyes
Englishoyez

From Middle English oyes, from Old French oyez, the imperative plural of oir (“to hear; to listen”), from Latin audīre. Commonly folk-etymologized as (and pronounced homophonously to) O + yes in the early modern period.

More words from Middle English, Old French, Latin

Full word history & related roots →