ya'll

See also: yall and y'all

English

Etymology 1

Contraction of ya (“you”) + will.

Contraction

ya'll

1. Pronunciation spelling of you'll.
   • 1857, Barry Alan Grael, work based on Dion Boucicault's play, The Streets of New York [1], page 70:

     Don't go in, ya'll only make thins worse.

   • 1886, Donald MacLeod, editor, Good Words for 1886, page 201:

     Yis, yis; ya'll be forced, or else ya'll tak t' luck awaäy wi' ya, an' that wad niver deä.

   • 1921, Robert Norwood, Bill Boram, page 52:

     Bill's spilin' for a fight, / An' one o' these black God-forgotten days / He'll let tha devil tap 'im on tha shoulder, / An' then ya'll see what happens.

   • 1985, V.C. Andrews, Heaven‎^[2], →ISBN, page 243:

     Ya'll like that. Ya'll come out smellin like a rose, looking like one, too.

   • 2002, Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats, page 24:

     Ya'll only ever be Xavier Cassidy's work horse. He won't treat ya right.

   • 2006, J. R. Reynolds, Sustenance of Courage, page 281:

     But then ya'll only have two oxen if ya do that, Mrs. Burt.

Etymology 2

Contraction of ya + all, or you + all with spelling perhaps influenced by you'll.

Pronoun

ya'll

1. Alternative spelling of y'all (especially in AAVE).
   • 1985, Barbara Savage, Miles from Nowhere, page 89:

     So ya'll need a place to camp do ya?

   • 1987, Beth Henley, The Lucky Spot, page 20:

     Ya'll all gotta look real beautiful for tonight.

   • 1999, Connie Rose Porter, Imani All Mine, page 207:

     Ya'll folk forget about the street number.

   • 2000, Frankie Avalon Wolfe, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, page 308:

     Hinduism — Ya’ll Come Back Now

   • 2004, James E. Pittman, The Way We See It: Expressed through poetry and rhyme from friends and family, page 35:

     Ya’ll don’t know bout the Souf, fah real // Let me tell ya’ll how it be.

   • 2004, Ronald Everett Capps, Off Magazine Street, page 291:

     Then, when ya'll were young, ya'll probably learned a lot about manners and how to act, didn't ya'll?

   • 2005, Jimmie, Life, Death And Sex In Prison, page 21:

     “I’m Lieutenant Bunger. Ya’ll do exactly as I or any other uniformed officer here tells you to do, whenever he wants ya’ll to do it. Ifen ya’ll don’t do it quickly enough and the way we tell ya’ll to do it, we’ll march ya’ll right to the fuckin’ ‘hole’. For you new inmates […] I mean solitary confinement. We don’t fuck aroun’ with ya’ll here. Ifen ya’ll don’t listen to what we tells yoh, ya’ll be in the ‘hole’ until ya’ll get as blind as a bat from the dark. Right now ya’ll are goin’ to ‘B’ house where ya’ll have a place to sleep this night”.

Anagrams

• -ally, Ally, Lyla, ally