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Main meanings of hoy in English

: hoy1hoy2hoy3

hoy1

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 nounAustralian

  • A game resembling bingo, using playing cards.

    ‘Why not bring your friends along to a fun morning playing Hoy and then delicious BBQ lunch?’
    ‘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.’

Origin

Natural exclamation: first recorded in late Middle English.

Pronunciation

hoy

/hɔɪ/

Main meanings of hoy in English

: hoy1hoy2hoy3

hoy2

noun

historical

  • A 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.’
    • ‘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.’
    • ‘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

hoy

/hɔɪ/

Main meanings of hoy in English

: hoy1hoy2hoy3

hoy3

verb

[with object]informal Australian, Northern English

  • 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.’
    • ‘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.’
    • ‘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.’
    hurl, smash, crash, slam, throw, toss, fling, pitch, cast, lob, launch, flip, catapult, shy, aim, direct, project, propel, send, bowl

Origin

Mid 19th century of unknown origin.

Pronunciation

hoy

/hɔɪ/