HAY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does hay mean? 

• HAY (noun)
  The noun HAY has 1 sense:

1. grass mowed and cured for use as fodder

  Familiarity information: HAY used as a noun is very rare.

• HAY (verb)
  The verb HAY has 1 sense:

1. convert (plant material) into hay

  Familiarity information: HAY used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HAY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Grass mowed and cured for use as fodder

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("hay" is a kind of...):

fodder (coarse food (especially for livestock) composed of entire plants or the leaves and stalks of a cereal crop)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hay"):

timothy (a grass grown for hay)

Holonyms ("hay" is a substance of...):

haymow (a mass of hay piled up in a barn for preservation)

• HAY (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they hay    ... he / she / it hays   
Past simple: hayed   
Past participle: hayed   
-ing form: haying   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Convert (plant material) into hay

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "hay" is one way to...):

convert (change the nature, purpose, or function of something)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

 Context examples 

We need scarcely to assure you that we are making hay while the sun shines.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

At last he cried out as loud as he could, “Don’t bring me any more hay! Don’t bring me any more hay!”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Acetaminophen Diphenhydramine is used to treat symptoms of allergies and hay fever.

(Acetaminophen/Diphenhydramine, NCI Thesaurus)

Hay added, "Our work indicates that local management provides a degree of insurance against global stresses, but there are likely higher temperatures that render the insurance ineffective."

(Voracious fish defend coral reefs against warming, Wikinews)

“He must be going. He had business at the Crown about his hay, and a great many errands for Mrs. Weston at Ford's, but he need not hurry any body else.”

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

So Art went on:—He had been there, and though it could only have been for a few seconds, he made rare hay of the place.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

You do with him as you would with a sack of potatoes or a bale of hay.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

This can trigger a type of allergy called hay fever.

(Hay Fever, NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Systemic and pulmonary reactions resulting from inhalation of dust from moldy hay, threshing dust, or moldy straw, by persons who have become hypersensitive to antigens in the dust.

(Farmer's Lung, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)