Word.ws English Dictionary

pray'd

pray'd is the simple past and past participle of pray.

Meaning of pray

Verb

pray (third-person singular simple present prays, present participle praying, simple past and past participle prayed)

  1. To direct words, thoughts, or one's attention to a deity or any higher being, for the sake of adoration, thanks, petition for help, etc.
    • Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca.
  2. To humbly beg a person for aid or their time.
  3. (obsolete) To ask earnestly for; to seek to obtain by supplication; to entreat for.
    • I know not how to pray your patience.1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  4. To wish or hope strongly for a particular outcome.
    • She is praying that the Red Sox will win tonight.
  5. (obsolete) To implore, to entreat, to request.
    • They prayd him sit, and gave him for to feed
      Such homely what as serves the simple clowne,
      That doth despise the dainties of the towne[…]1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 7

See all 7 meanings of pray

Questions about pray'd

What is pray'd the simple past and past participle of?
Pray'd is the simple past and past participle of pray.

Words near pray'd in the dictionary

  1. pray in aid
  2. pray tell
  3. pray the gay away
  4. pray to the porcelain god
  5. pray to the porcelain goddess
  6. pray'd
  7. pray'r
  8. pray'rs
  9. praya
  10. prayable
  11. Prayag

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pray'd (page history and authors); pray (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: “pray'd.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pray%27d. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.