hoy1
/hɔɪ
/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 noun] Australian
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.
Rhymes
hoy2
/hɔɪ/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.
Origin
Middle English: from Middle Dutch hoei, of unknown origin.
hoy3
/hɔɪ/verb [with object] Australian & Northern English, informal
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.
Origin
Mid 19th century: of unknown origin.