student asking question

Is "yay" an exclamation? Should I ignore "yay" to understand this sentence?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"Yay" is an exclamation, however in this case "yay" is actually is just another way to spell the word "yea", which is an old way of saying "this". "Yay high" means "this high", and is used when people are describing how tall something is and know the approximate height but don't know the actual measurement, so they use "yay" or "yea" as a replacement for the measurement. It is also often accompanied by a hand gesture to show the approximate height of something as they remember it. Ex: The thief was yea high with blue eyes and dark brown hair.

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