English

Alternative forms

• herry

Verb

herye ‎(third-person singular simple present heryeth, present participle herying, simple past and past participle heryed)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To honour, praise or celebrate.
   • c. 1380s, Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 1810, Samuel Johnson (editor), Alexander Chalmers (additional lives), The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume 1, page 251,

     How I mote tell anon right the gladnesse / Of Troilus, to Venus herying, / To the which who nede hath, God him bring.

   • 14thC, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Clerk's Prologue and Tale, 2002, Marion Wynne-Davies (editor), The Tales of The Clerk and The Wife of Bath, page 94,

     And whan that folk it to his fader tolde, / Nat oonly he, but al his contree merye / Was for this child, and God they thanke and herye.

   • 14thC, William de Shoreham, 1851, Early English Poetry, Ballads and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages, Volume 28, Percy Society, page 117,

     Thyse aungeles heryeth here wyth stevene, / Ase he hys hare quene of he[ve]ne.

   • 1563, John Foxe, 1851, Fox's Book of Martyrs: The Acts and Monuments of the Church, Volume 1, page 563,

     And Lord God, what herying is it to bilden thee a church of dead stones, and robben thy quicke churches of their bodilich liuelood?

   • 1579, Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender: November, 2012, Marie Loughlin, Sandra Bell, Patricia Brace (editors), The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose, page 797,

     Thenot, now nis the time of merimake. / Nor Pan to herye, nor with love to playe.

Related terms

• heryer