ya'll

/jʌl/UK/jɔːl/US/jɔl/cot caught merger/jɑl/

A form of you'll — you will

Meanings

ya'll1

contraction
  1. contractionpronunciation spellingPronunciation spelling of you'll.

    Don't go in, ya'll only make thins worse.

    1857, Barry Alan Grael, work based on Dion Boucicault's play, The Streets of New York http://books.google.com/books?id=dVr8FZH65foC, page 70
    5 more examples

    Yis, yis; ya'll be forced, or else ya'll tak t' luck awaäy wi' ya, an' that wad niver deä.

    1886, Donald MacLeod, editor, Good Words for 1886, page 201

    Bill's spilin' for a fight, / An' one o' these black God-forgotten days / He'll let tha devil tap 'im on tha shoulder, / An' then ya'll see what happens.

    1921, Robert Norwood, Bill Boram, page 52

    Ya'll like that. Ya'll come out smellin like a rose, looking like one, too.

    1985, V.C. Andrews, Heaven, →ISBN, page 243

    Ya'll only ever be Xavier Cassidy's work horse. He won't treat ya right.

    2002, Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats, page 24

    But then ya'll only have two oxen if ya do that, Mrs. Burt.

    2006, J. R. Reynolds, Sustenance of Courage, page 281

ya'll2

pronoun
  1. alternativeespecially African-American VernacularAlternative spelling of y'all.

    Hinduism — Ya’ll Come Back Now

    2000, Frankie Avalon Wolfe, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, page 308
    5 more examples

    So ya'll need a place to camp do ya?

    1985, Barbara Savage, Miles from Nowhere, page 89

    Ya'll all gotta look real beautiful for tonight.

    1987, Beth Henley, The Lucky Spot, page 20

    Ya'll folk forget about the street number.

    1999, Connie Rose Porter, Imani All Mine, page 207

    Ya’ll don’t know bout the Souf, fah real // Let me tell ya’ll how it be.

    2004, James E. Pittman, The Way We See It: Expressed through poetry and rhyme from friends and family, page 35

    Then, when ya'll were young, ya'll probably learned a lot about manners and how to act, didn't ya'll?

    2004, Ronald Everett Capps, Off Magazine Street, page 291

Origin

ya'll · contraction

Contraction of ya + will. By surface analysis, ya (“you”) + 'll.

Full word history & related roots →

ya'll · pronoun

Contraction of you all or ya all, with spelling perhaps influenced by you'll.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with ya'll

All rhymes →

Sounds the same

Cite this entry
APA

ya'll. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ya'll

MLA

“ya'll.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ya'll. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ya'll,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ya'll.

Source: ya'll on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.