Pronunciations
-
/ɹeɪ/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
- Received-Pronunciation
Noun
A beam of light or radiation.
- Examples
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I saw a ray of light through the clouds.
More examples (1)
Strangely light and delicate was his frame and seeming, yet with a sense of slumbering power beneath, as the delicate peak of a snow mountain seen afar in the low red rays of morning.
A rib-like reinforcement of bone or cartilage in a fish's fin.
One of the spheromeres of a radiate, especially one of the arms of a starfish or an ophiuran.
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.
Sight; perception; vision; from an old theory of vision, that sight was something which proceeded from the eye to the object seen.
Usage- Obsolete
- Examples
-
All eyes direct their rays / On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze.
A line extending indefinitely in one direction from a point.
Verb
To emit something as if in rays.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
-
More examples (2)
He was one of the unthanked benefactors of his race, who was patiently teaching and serving mankind, whilst they were shrinking from his coldness, or mocking his peculiarities. He could not sing for them a sweet song, or create a “thing of beauty” which should be “a joy for ever,” or touch their hearts, or fire their spirits, or deepen their reverence or their fervour. He was not a Poet, a Priest, or a Prophet, but only a cold, clear Intelligence, raying down pure white light, which brightened everything on which it fell, but warmed nothing—a Star of at least the second, if not of the first magnitude, in the Intellectual Firmament.
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.
To radiate as if in rays.
Usage- Intransitive
To expose to radiation.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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Rats' eyes with ulcus serpens were successfully treated; one second of raying stopped the progress of the ulcer, which healed uninterruptedly.
Noun
Any of the superorder Batoidea of marine fish with flat bodies, large wing-like fins, and whip-like tails.
Verb
To arrange.
Usage- Obsolete
To dress, array (someone).
Usage- Archaic
To stain or soil; to defile.
Usage- Obsolete
- Examples
-
From his soft eyes the teares he wypt away, / And from his face the filth that did it ray […].
Noun
Array; order; arrangement; dress.
Usage- Obsolete
- Uncountable
- Examples
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spoyling all her geares and goodly ray
Noun
The letter ⟨/⟩, one of two which represent the r sound in Pitman shorthand.
- Related words
- arin Latin and the name of the other Pitman r
Noun
a column of light (as from a beacon)
- Broader terms
a branch of an umbel or an umbelliform inflorescence
(mathematics) a straight line extending from a point
- Broader terms
a group of nearly parallel lines of electromagnetic radiation
- Synonyms
the syllable naming the second (supertonic) note of any major scale in solmization
- Synonyms
- Broader terms
any of the stiff bony spines in the fin of a fish
- Broader terms
cartilaginous fishes having horizontally flattened bodies and enlarged winglike pectoral fins with gills on the underside; most swim by moving the pectoral fins
- Broader terms
Verb
emit as rays
- Examples
-
That tower rays a laser beam for miles across the sky
extend or spread outward from a center or focus or inward towards a center
- Synonyms
- Examples
-
spokes radiate from the hub of the wheel
This plants radiate spines in all directions
expose to radiation
- Synonyms
- Examples
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irradiate food