English

Usage frequency of y’all in the United States.

Alternative forms

• you all

Pronoun

y'all

1. (chiefly US, dialect, Southern US) Plural form of you.
   • 1987, Judson D. Hale, The education of a Yankee: an American memoir, page 3:

     Much later, after dozens of the men had come up to me to shake my hand (with both of theirs) and say "Y'all come back soon, hear? ...

   • 2007, Roy Blount, Long time leaving: dispatches from up South, page 117:

     People in the South do indeed seem to be addressing a single person as "y'all." For instance, a restaurant patron might ask a waiter, "What y'all got for dessert tonight?" In that case, "y'all" refers collectively to the people who run the restaurant.

Usage notes

• The form y'all is heard primarily in the Southern United States, and nationwide in AAVE. For other second-personal plural pronouns, see you.
• In the past, y'all was never used as a proper singular, but it may have been used with an implied plural, e.g. "you [and your team]", "you [and your coworkers]", "you [and your family]". Due to a cultural shift in the United States by non-Southerners using the word, it is now sometimes used as a singular you.^[1]
• Notwithstanding its etymology, the all in y'all is merely a plural marker, not a quantifier. Thus, just as us may refer either to some of us or all of us in standard English, y'all may refer either to some of y'all or to all [of] y'all.

Synonyms

• see the list of other second-person pronouns in you

Related terms

• y'all's (possessive)
• all y'all (definitely plural)
• ya'll
• y'awl
• allyou
• ya

Translations

References

1. ↑ Okrent, Anrika (2014-09-14), “Can y'all be used to refer to a single person?”, in The Week (in English), The Week Publications, retrieved 2014-09-15

Anagrams

• ally , Ally