ray

• enPR: rā, IPA^(key): /ɹeɪ/

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• Rhymes: -eɪ

Via Middle English, borrowed from Old French rai, from Latin radius (“staff, stake, spoke”). Doublet of radius.

ray (plural rays)

1. A beam of light or radiation.

   I saw a ray of light through the clouds.

2. (zoology) A rib-like reinforcement of bone or cartilage in a fish's fin.
3. (zoology) One of the spheromeres of a radiate, especially one of the arms of a starfish or an ophiuran.
4. (botany) A radiating part of a flower or plant; the marginal florets of a compound flower, such as an aster or a sunflower; one of the pedicels of an umbel or other circular flower cluster; radius.
5. (obsolete) Sight; perception; vision; from an old theory of vision, that sight was something which proceeded from the eye to the object seen.
   • Alexander Pope

     All eyes direct their rays / On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze.

6. (mathematics) A line extending indefinitely in one direction from a point.
7. (colloquial) A tiny amount.

   Unfortunately he didn't have a ray of hope.

ray (third-person singular simple present rays, present participle raying, simple past and past participle rayed)

1. (transitive) To emit something as if in rays.
   • Robert Browning

     I had no particular woman in my mind; certainly never intended to personify wisdom, philosophy, or any other abstraction; and the orb, raying colour out of whiteness, was altogether a fancy of my own.

2. (intransitive) To radiate as if in rays.

Old French raie, from Latin raia.

ray (plural rays)

1. A marine fish with a flat body, large wing-like fins, and a whip-like tail.

Shortened from array.

ray (third-person singular simple present rays, present participle raying, simple past and past participle rayed)

1. (obsolete) To arrange. [14th-18th c.]
2. (now rare) To dress, array (someone). [from 14th c.]

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir T. More to this entry?)

3. (obsolete) To stain or soil; to defile. [16th-19th c.]
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.4:

     From his soft eyes the teares he wypt away, / And form his face the filth that did it ray […] .

From its sound, by analogy with the letters chay, jay, gay, kay, which it resembles graphically.

ray (plural rays)

1. The letter ⟨/⟩, one of two which represent the r sound in Pitman shorthand.

• ar, in Latin and the name of the other Pitman r

ray (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) Array; order; arrangement; dress.
   • Spenser

     And spoiling all her gears and goodly ray.

Alternative forms.

ray (plural rays)

1. (music) Alternative form of re

• -ary, Ary, Ayr, RYA, ary, ayr, rya, yar

ray (plural rayes)

1. part (of hair)

ray (plural rayes)

1. ray (fish)

From Arabic.

ray ?

1. opinion

Borrowed from French rail.

ray (definite accusative rayı, plural raylar)

1. rail