kye

American

[key] / keɪ /

noun

a private Korean-American banking club to which members pay contributions and from which they may take out loans, usually to start small businesses.

kye British

/ kaɪ /

noun

(functioning as plural) a Scottish and Northern English variant of kine

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of kye

Borrowed into English from Korean around 1985–90

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

What Koreans call kye is a hui for the Chinese, ekub for Ethiopians, san for Dominicans.

From Time Magazine Archive

For example, we find that in 1596 he ran a day foray into Gilsland, and carried off “300 oxen and kye, a horse and a nag.”

From Border Raids and Reivers by Borland, Robert

Three hundred kye are far too many for one old man to herd.

From Tales From Scottish Ballads by Stewart, Allan

For instead of his ain ten milk kye, Jamie Telfer has gotten thirty and three.

From Border Raids and Reivers by Borland, Robert

O, I wad like to ken—to the beggar-wife says I— Gin death’s as sh�re to men as killin’ is to kye, Why God has filled the yearth sae fu’ o’ tasty things to pree.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) by Stevenson, Robert Louis

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023