Word.ws English Dictionary

alay

alay is the obsolete spelling of allay.

Meaning of allay

Verb

allay (third-person singular simple present allays, present participle allaying, simple past and past participle allayed)

  1. (transitive) To make quiet or put at rest; to pacify or appease; to quell; to calm.
    • to allay popular excitement
  2. (transitive) To alleviate; to abate; to mitigate.
    • to allay the severity of affliction or the bitterness of adversity
    Synonyms:
    alleviate, abate
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) To subside, abate, become peaceful.
    • And the wynde alayed, and there folowed a greate calme: and he sayde unto them: why are ye fearfull?1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Mark iiij
  4. (archaic) To mix (metals); to mix with a baser metal; to alloy; to deteriorate.
  5. (archaic, broadly) To make worse by the introduction of inferior elements.
    • Yet far be it from us to condemn all their works to be dross, because debased and allayed with superstitious intents […]1639, Thomas Fuller, The Historie of the Holy Warr

See all 7 meanings of allay

Forms of alay

third-person singular presentalays
present participlealaying
past participlealayed
pastalayed

Questions about alay

What is alay the obsolete spelling of?
Alay is the obsolete spelling of allay.

Words near alay in the dictionary

  1. Alawist
  2. Alawists
  3. Alawite
  4. Alawites
  5. Alawitism
  6. alay
  7. Alay-Nangbabaan
  8. Alaya
  9. Alayah
  10. alayed
  11. alaying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: alay (page history and authors); allay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “alay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.