Word.ws English Dictionary

made hay

made hay is the simple past and past participle of make hay.

Meaning of make hay

Verb

make hay (third-person singular simple present makes hay, present participle making hay, simple past and past participle made hay)

  1. (literally) To cut grass to turn into hay for animal feed.
  2. (figuratively) To take advantage of an opportunity.
    • I suggested that this was a mistake, particularly at a time of national crisis on the railways, because it opened the way for critics of the railway to make hay - which Institute of Economic Affairs Director Richard Wellings duly did in an anti-rail article in the Daily Telegraph.2021 January 27, Christian Wolmar, “Little-used stations”, in RAIL, issue 923, page 46

Questions about made hay

What is made hay the simple past and past participle of?
Made hay is the simple past and past participle of make hay.

Words near made hay in the dictionary

  1. made hands
  2. made happen
  3. made hard work of
  4. made haste
  5. made haste slowly
  6. made hay
  7. made hay while the sun shone
  8. made head against
  9. made head or tail of
  10. made headway
  11. made heavy going of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made hay (page history and authors); make hay (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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