Wey
Pronunciation
- enPR: wÄ, IPA: /weɪ/
- Homophones: way, weigh, whey (in accents with the wine-whine merger)
Origin
From Middle English weie, waie, weihe, wæÈe, from Old English wǣġ, wǣġe ("a weight; a tool for weighing, balance, scale"), from Proto-Germanic *wÄ“giz, *wÄ“gÇ ("weight; scale"), from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ- ("to move, bring, transport"). Cognate with German Waage ("weight"), Icelandic vág ("a weight").
Full definition of wey
Noun
wey
(plural weys)- An old English measure of weight containing 224 pounds; equivalent to 2 hundredweight.
- c. 1376, William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, Version B, Passus 5, Line 91:Than though I hadde this wouke ywonne a weye of Essex cheese.
- 1843, The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge p. 202:Seven pounds make a clove, 2 cloves a stone, 2 stone a tod, 6 1/2 tods a wey, 2 weys a sack, 12 sacks a last. ... It is to be observed here that a sack is 13 tods, and a tod 28 pounds, so that the sack is 364 pounds.
- 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, Volume 4, p. 208:Cheese and salt are purchased by the wey of two hundredweight, or by the stone of fourteen pounds.
- unknown date: A wey is 6 tods, or 182 pounds, of wool; a load, or five quarters, of wheat, 40 bushels of salt, each weighing 56 pounds; 32 cloves of cheese, each weighing seven pounds; 48 bushels of oats and barley; and from two cwt. to three cwt. of butter. — Simmonds.