hay

/heɪ/

hay noun: grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.

Image: Myrabella, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

hay (countable and uncountable, plural hays)

(uncountable) Grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.
- Make hay while sunne shines.1605, M. N. [pseudonym; William Camden], Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, […], London: […] G[eorge] E[ld] for Simon Waterson, →OCLC
- Hay may be dried too much as well as too little.1857, Charles Louis Flint, Grasses and Forage Plants: A Practical Treatise, […]
(countable) Any mix of green leafy plants used for fodder.
(slang) Cannabis; marijuana.
- I would like some of that hay. Enclose $20.1947, William Burroughs, letter, 19 Feb 1947
- Jeff Spicoli, roll me another hay1994, “Bug Powder Dust”, performed by Bomb the Bass
A net set around the haunt of an animal, especially a rabbit.

Verb

hay (third-person singular simple present hays, present participle haying, simple past and past participle hayed)

To cut grasses or herb plants for use as animal fodder.
To lay snares for rabbits.

Noun (2)

hay (plural hays)

(obsolete) A hedge.
(obsolete) A net placed around the lair or burrow of an animal.
(obsolete) An enclosure, haw.
(obsolete) A circular country dance.
- My men like Satyres grazing on the lawnes,
  Shall with their Goate feete daunce an antick hay,1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC...
- I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play
  On the tabour to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Noun (3)

hay (plural hays)

The letter for the h sound in Pitman shorthand.

Proper noun capitalized: Hay

Hay

A surname.
A town and local government area (Hay Shire) in the Riverina area of New South Wales, Australia, named after John Hay.
A township in Gladwin County, Michigan, United States.
An unincorporated community in Whitman County, Washington, United States.
(abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Hay-on-Wye: a small town in Hay community, Powys, Wales, on the England-Wales border.
A community (civil parish) for Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, served by Hay-on-Wye Town Council.
A hamlet in St Breock parish, Cornwall, England (OS grid ref SW9770).

hay meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Bengali

hay in Hindi

grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder: सूखी घास sūkhī ghās, पुआल puāl, पराली parālī

hay in Tamil

grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder: வைக்கோல் vaikkōl

hay in Marathi

grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder: गवत gavat

hay in Bengali

grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder: খড় khoṛ

More languagesFewer languages

hay in Telugu: ఎండు గడ్డి eṇḍu gaḍḍi
hay in Malayalam: വയ്ക്കോൽ vaykkōl, കച്ചിൽ kaccil
hay in Kannada: ಹುಲ್ಲು hullu
hay in Gujarati: પરાગરજ
hay in Assamese: খেৰ kher
hay in Nepali: पराल parāl
hay in Tagalog: ginikan, dayami
hay in Arabic: تِبْن tibn, جَفِيف jafīf, حَشِيش ḥašīš, دَرِيس darīs
hay in Malay: rumput kering
hay in Indonesian: rumput kering
hay in Persian: کاه kâh
hay in Thai: ฟาง faang
hay in Vietnamese: cỏ khô, cắt cỏ cho thú vật
hay in Myanmar: မြက်ခြောက် mrakhkrauk

Examples of hay in a sentence

When camping, he usually makes a bed for the night from hay and a blanket.
Don't disturb them. They're having a roll in the hay, I think.
If you underdry the cut hay, then it may develop mould in storage.

All 40 example sentences with hay

Forms of hay

Noun
plural	hays
Verb
third-person singular present	hays
present participle	haying
past participle	hayed
past	hayed

Plural of hay: hays

Origin of hay

From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją, from *hawwaną (“to hew, cut down”). Cognate with West Frisian hea (“hay”), Alemannic German Heuw (“hay”), Cimbrian höobe (“hay”), Dutch hooi (“hay”), German Heu (“hay”), Luxembourgish Hee (“hay”), Mòcheno hei (“hay”), Yiddish היי (hey, “hay”), Danish hø (“hay”), Faroese hoyggj (“hay”), Gutnish hoy (“hay”), Icelandic hey (“hay”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk høy (“hay”), Swedish hö (“hay”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍅𐌹 (hawi, “grass, hay”). More at hew.

From Middle English haye, heye, a conflation of Old English heġe (“hedge, fence”) and Old English ġehæġ (“an enclosed piece of land”).

From the sound it represents, by analogy with other letters such as kay and gay. The expected form in English if the h had survived in the Latin name of the letter "h", hā.

Words formed from hay

Words that rhyme with hay

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hay

What does hay mean?: Hay means grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.
What is hay in Hindi?: Hay in Hindi is सूखी घास (sūkhī ghās), पुआल (puāl), पराली (parālī). See Hay meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is hay?: Hay can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce hay?: Hay is pronounced /heɪ/.
What is the plural of hay?: The plural of hay is hays.

Words near hay in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: hay (page history and authors); Hay (page history and authors); hay (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hay.ogg.

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