la
Represents the sound of music or singing.
Adjective
- Prefixed to the name of a woman, with ironic effect (as though an opera prima donna).
- Following lukewarm on the heels of an article a few weeks ago, where (I paraphrase due to having filed the relevant copy in the recycling bin) Victoria Beckham made a "well-meaning" remark that the other Spice Girls...
- By judicious leaking, he also managed to make la Kirkpatrick and her associates look rather unsavory. - 2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Atlantic, published 2011, page 232:
- (You have to wonder where la Wintour finds the time for all this styling: maybe it's a displacement activity to fill the void left by her failure to get the Democratic party into power?) - 2025 June 21, Jo Ellison, “The...
Origin
From French la, Italian la.
Interjection obsolete
- Used to introduce a statement with emphatic or intensive effect.
- Expressing surprise, anger. etc.
- La, ma'am, what doth your la'ship think? the girl that your la'ship saw at church on Sunday, whom you thought so handsome; though you would not have thought her so handsome neither, if you had seen her nearer, but to be...
- “Oh, la! here come the Richardsons. I had a vast deal more to say to you, but I must not stay away from them any longer.” - 1811, [Jane Austen], chapter 2, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume III, London: […] C[harles]...
- "La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with us. We're not men. We can't fight you," Miss Jane said. - 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published...
Origin
From Middle English la, from Old English lā. More at lo.
Forms
Interjection Entry 3
- Represents the sound of music or singing.
- "La la la la, I can't hear you!" Jimmy said, sticking his fingers in his ears.
- The only part Lucy had to sing was the interlude, which was a bunch of la la la's, and the last verse of the song, which was only four lines, and the chorus, which was just as short. - 2019, Keira Brown, Between the...
Origin
Sound used to form meaningless song refrains. Of imitative origin. Compare Old English lā (a common exclamation), Ancient Greek λαλαγε (lalage, “babble”), German lallen (“to babble”).
Derived
Noun entertainment, lifestyle
- A syllable used in solfège to represent the sixth note of a major scale.
- And now Mrs Waters (for we must confess she was in the same bed), being, I suppose, awakened from her sleep, and seeing two men fighting in her bedchamber, began to scream in the most violent manner, crying out murder!...
-
(shapenote) Sometimes syllable for both the third and the sixth.
Origin
From Glover's solmization, from Middle English la (“sixth degree or note of Guido of Arezzo's hexachordal scales”), Italian la in the solmization of Guido of Arezzo, from the first syllable of Latin labiī (“lip's”) in the lyrics of the scale-ascending hymn Ut queant laxis by Paulus Deacon.
Forms
Noun Entry 5
- lad, kid
Origin
Possibly a shortened form of lad.
Forms
Related
Particle Hong Kong, colloquial
- Placed at the end of a sentence in imperatives making it sound more like a request than an order.
- Sleep la!
- Eat shit la you!
- Used to tone down comments.
- ok la
Origin
From Cantonese 啦 (laa¹). Doublet of lah.
Related
Particle Hong Kong, Manglish
- Alternative form of lah.