Ayont is a Scots and Northern English dialect word meaning beyond — on the other side of, or further than. It is the dialectal form of 'beyond,' with the characteristic Scots vowel shift and abbreviation. Used in Scots poetry, literature, and speech to indicate spatial or metaphorical distance. Burns uses it; it appears in traditional Scots songs. It carries a gentle, lyrical quality — 'ayont the hills' sounds far more evocative than 'beyond the hills' in a Scots vernacular register.
The cottage was ayont the burn, hidden from the road by a stand of old birches.
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(Scotland, Northern England) Beyond.
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(Scotland, Northern England) Beyond.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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