y'all
nounColloquialSouth
A American English slang term. Browse all American slang.
What it means
You, plural. Fills a genuine gap in standard English, which lost its second-person plural, and has spread far beyond the South for exactly that reason.
All y'all intensifies it, addressing every single member of a group.
In use
Are y'all coming to the thing tonight?
All y'all need to hear this.
Where it comes from
Southern American English, with contributions from both Scots-Irish settlement patterns and AAVE. It has been adopted nationally in part because it is gender-neutral, unlike 'you guys'.
Other forms
- Similar terms:
- you guys, yinz