Hoya
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A member of the Georgetown Hoyas, the official athletics teams of Georgetown University in the United States.
"Today, the Hoyas’ senior point guard and former first-team All-Met is pursuing a more audacious goal: to take Georgetown deep in the NCAA tournament and add to the Final Four banners on display in McDonough Arena."
- 2 Any plant of the genus Hoya
- 3 any plant of the genus Hoya having fleshy leaves and usually nectariferous flowers wordnet
- 4 A current or former student of Georgetown University.
"This traveling bear doesn’t belong to a circus — Chunky the Georgetown Panda is a stuffed panda that has been shipped across the country to Hoyas old and new."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Today, the Hoyas’ senior point guard and former first-team All-Met is pursuing a more audacious goal: to take Georgetown deep in the NCAA tournament and add to the Final Four banners on display in McDonough Arena."
Etymology
Derived from the mixed Greek and Latin chant "Hoya Saxa" (meaning "What Rocks"), which gained popularity at the school in the late nineteenth century. The name Hoyas came into use in the 1920s.
From the genus name.
Related phrases
More for "hoya"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.