Aya

//ˈaɪə// adv, name, noun

adv, name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative form of ayah. alt-of, alternative
  2. 2
    Initialism of adolescent or young adult or adolescent and young adult. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism

    "Near-synonyms: YA, young adult"

Adverb
  1. 1
    Yes; yea; aye. New-England, archaic, dialectal, not-comparable

    "“The date is May 7, 1901, just before dawn. (COCK CROW offstage.) Aya, just about.”"

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    In Akkadian mythology, a mother goddess, consort of the sun god Shamash.
  2. 2
    A female given name from Japanese.
  3. 3
    55565 Aya, a trans-Neptunian object and likely dwarf planet; named after said goddess.

Synonyms

All synonyms
yayoung adult

Example

More examples

"Aya tends to carry things to extremes."

Etymology

Etymology 1

The planetoid was named after the Akkadian goddess, which began with the same first letter as the provisional designation 2002 AW₁₉₇.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Japanese あや (Aya).

Related phrases

mother goddess

More for "aya"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.