There are nine meanings listed in OED's entry for the verb convoy , three of which are labelled obsolete. The earliest known use of the verb convoy is in the Middle English period β OED's earliest evidence for convoy is from around , in the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer, poet and administrator.
Etymons: French convoyer , conveier. Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. View the pronunciation model here. Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U. English Simple Text Respell. More about OED's frequency bands. Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams version 2 , a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between and The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs distinct entries that share the same word-form, e. This may result in inaccuracies. Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus. Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from to the present.
The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the corpus. Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into convoy, v. Please include your email address if you are happy to be contacted about your feedback. OUP will not use this email address for any other purpose. Skip to main content. Dictionary Historical Thesaurus.
What does the verb convoy mean? This word is used in Scottish English. About 0. See frequency. How is the verb convoy pronounced? See pronunciation. Earliest known use Middle English. See etymology. Summary A borrowing from French. The shift of the main stress to the first syllable results from association with convoy n. Show less. Quotations Hide all quotations Contents I.
