hay.
Grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.
Meaning & usage
Grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.
Any mix of green leafy plants used for fodder.
Cannabis; marijuana.
A net set around the haunt of an animal, especially a rabbit.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją, from *hawwaną (“to hew, cut down”). Cognate with West Frisian hea (“hay”), Alemannic German Heuw (“hay”), Cimbrian höobe (“hay”), Dutch hooi (“hay”), German Heu (“hay”), Luxembourgish Hee (“hay”), Mòcheno hei (“hay”), Yiddish היי (hey, “hay”), Danish hø (“hay”), Faroese hoyggj (“hay”), Gutnish hoy (“hay”), Icelandic hey (“hay”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk høy (“hay”), Swedish hö (“hay”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍅𐌹 (hawi, “grass, hay”). More at hew.
To cut grasses or herb plants for use as animal fodder.
To lay snares for rabbits.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją, from *hawwaną (“to hew, cut down”). Cognate with West Frisian hea (“hay”), Alemannic German Heuw (“hay”), Cimbrian höobe (“hay”), Dutch hooi (“hay”), German Heu (“hay”), Luxembourgish Hee (“hay”), Mòcheno hei (“hay”), Yiddish היי (hey, “hay”), Danish hø (“hay”), Faroese hoyggj (“hay”), Gutnish hoy (“hay”), Icelandic hey (“hay”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk høy (“hay”), Swedish hö (“hay”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍅𐌹 (hawi, “grass, hay”). More at hew.
A hedge.
A net placed around the lair or burrow of an animal.
An enclosure, haw.
A circular country dance.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English haye, heye, a conflation of Old English heġe (“hedge, fence”) and Old English ġehæġ (“an enclosed piece of land”).
The letter for the h sound in Pitman shorthand.
Where this word comes from
From the sound it represents, by analogy with other letters such as kay and gay. The expected form in English if the h had survived in the Latin name of the letter "h", hā.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.