braying

braying is the present participle and gerund of bray.

Meaning of bray

bray (third-person singular simple present brays, present participle braying, simple past and past participle brayed)

(intransitive) Of an animal (now chiefly of animals related to the ass or donkey, and the camel): to make its cry.
- Whenever I walked by, that donkey brayed at me.
Synonyms:

blore, hee-haw
(broadly, intransitive) To make a harsh, discordant sound like a donkey's bray.
- He threw back his head and brayed with laughter.
(transitive) To make or utter (a shout, sound, etc.) discordantly, loudly, or in a harsh and grating manner.
- [N]ow ſtorming furie roſe, / And clamour ſuch as heard in Heav'n till now / Was never, Arms on Armour claſhing bray'd / Horrible discord, and the madding Wheeles / Of brazen Chariots rag'd; [...]1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...

bray (third-person singular simple present brays, present participle braying, simple past and past participle brayed)

(archaic, transitive) To crush or pound, especially using a pestle and mortar.
- Though thou ſhouldeſt bray a fool in a morter among wheate with a peſtell, yet will not his fooliſhneſſe depart from him.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 27:22
(UK, Yorkshire, broadly, transitive) To hit (someone or something).
- If anything he brayed him all the harder – the old family bull recognising his fighting days were close to over.2011, Sarah Hall, “Butcher’s Perfume”, in The Beautiful Indifference, London: Faber and Faber, →ISBN, page 25

braying (plural brayings)

An act or sound of braying.
- We heard the unpleasant braying of the snipe, now near to us, now far off, now high up in the air, now right over our heads, and suddenly it seemed close to our ears, now on all sides, still without our being able to catch sight of the bird.1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 86

plural	brayings

What does braying mean?: Braying means an act or sound of braying.
What is braying the present participle and gerund of?: Braying is the present participle and gerund of bray.
What part of speech is braying?: Braying is a noun.
What is the plural of braying?: The plural of braying is brayings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: braying (page history and authors); bray (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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