Yon
adv, det, name, phrase, pron ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 distant but within sight (‘yon’ is dialectal) wordnet
- 1 yonder. dated, dialectal, not-comparable
- 1 at or in an indicated (usually distant) place (‘yon’ is archaic and dialectal) wordnet
- 1 Distant, but within sight; (that thing) just over there. dated, dialectal
"He went to climb yon hill."
- 1 That one or those over there. dated, dialectal
"As soon as old Andrew came home, his wife and he, as was natural, instantly began to converse on the events of the preceding night; and in the course of their conversation Andrew said, "Gudeness be about us' Jean, was not yon an awfu' speech o' our bairn's to young Jock Allanson last night?""
- 1 Acronym of yarn over needle. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of
"Buttonhole row: (K1, p1) 3 times, yon, k2tog, (k1,p1) 5 times, yon, k2tog, […]"
- 1 A male given name.
- 2 A surname from French.
- 3 A surname from Korean.
- 4 A surname.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples""See yon twelve swans, in jubilant array, / whom late Jove's eagle scattered through the sky; / now these alight, now those the pitch survey.""
Etymology
From Middle English yon, from Old English ġeon, from Proto-Germanic *jainaz. Cognate with German jener.
From French Yon, from the Latin personal name Ionis. Ionis was also named as a daughter of Ἴναχος (Ínakhos), see Ἰώ (Iṓ).
From Korean 연(延) (Yeon), 연(燕) (Yeon), 연(連) (Yeon), or 연(淵) (Yeon).
Related phrases
More for "yon"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.