Word.ws English Dictionary

rayed

rayed is the simple past and past participle of ray.

Meaning of ray

Verb (1)

ray (third-person singular simple present rays, present participle raying, simple past and past participle rayed)

  1. (transitive) To emit something as if in rays.
    • He was one of the unthanked benefactors of his race, who was patiently teaching and serving mankind, whilst they were shrinking from his coldness, or mocking his peculiarities. He could not sing for them a sweet song, or create a “thing of beauty” which should be “a joy for ever,” or touch their...1851, George Wilson, The Life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish, page 186
  2. (intransitive) To radiate as if in rays.
  3. (transitive) To expose to radiation.
    • Rats' eyes with ulcus serpens were successfully treated; one second of raying stopped the progress of the ulcer, which healed uninterruptedly.1928, Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, page 219

Verb (2)

ray (third-person singular simple present rays, present participle raying, simple past and past participle rayed)

  1. (obsolete) To arrange.
  2. (archaic) To dress, array (someone).
  3. (obsolete) To stain or soil; to defile.
    • From his soft eyes the teares he wypt away, / And from his face the filth that did it ray […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

See all 28 meanings of ray

Forms of rayed

comparativemore rayed
superlativemost rayed

Origin of rayed

From ray + -ed. Piecewise doublet of radiused.

Words formed from rayed

Questions about rayed

What is rayed the simple past and past participle of?
Rayed is the simple past and past participle of ray.

Words near rayed in the dictionary

  1. rayciss
  2. raycizzum
  3. Rayden
  4. Raydon
  5. Raye
  6. rayed
  7. Rayes
  8. Rayfield
  9. Rayfields
  10. rayfinned
  11. Rayford

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rayed (page history and authors); ray (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: “rayed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rayed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.