Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use bray in a sentence

15 example sentences · verb, noun

Bray means of an animal (now chiefly of animals related to the ass or donkey, and the camel): to make its cry. Example: “Whenever I walked by, that donkey brayed at me.”

Examples of bray by meaning

verbOf 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.

verbTo make a harsh, discordant sound like a donkey's bray.

  • He threw back his head and brayed with laughter.
  • "But, Jack, it's all so circumstantial—you said so yourself," Brammel brayed, never stronger than when demonstrating that two positives made a negative.1986, John le Carré [pseudonym; David John Moore Cornwell], A Perfect Spy, London: Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN; 1st Pocket Books trade...

nounAny discordant, grating, or harsh sound.

  • Even at half volume, her high-pitched brays rattled teeth.2005, Merline Lovelace, The Last Bullet (Cleo North Trilogy; 3), Ontario: Mira Books, →ISBN, page 15

verbTo 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

More sentences with bray

  • Branca, concentrating so intently that he didn't hear the braying crowd, threw a hummer down the middle.2015, Andrew Goldblatt, The Giants and the Dodgers, page 115. From the entry hummer
  • Lost souls, braying for self-help and instant gratification up votes on the internet.2013 August 5, Ryan Bassil, “Is Taylor Swift a Regular Poster on 4Chan?”, in Vice, archived from the original on 01 Nov 2024. From the entry /b/ro
  • I must have popped too many; the Iowa donkeys are starting to bray in my ears.2010, Loren Berengere, Satirical Denouncements of the Wicked Americans and We Anti-Matriarchalists, page 98. From the entry pompatus
  • Some accents reveal the distinctive bray of the upper crust, but most are generic middle class.2006 June 18, J. F. O. McAllister, “A New Kind of Elite”, in Time. From the entry upper crust
  • Puppet-masters were making us all jump and bray, Malik Solanka fretted.2001, Salman Rushdie, Fury: A Novel, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, page 8. From the entry puppet master
  • I am tired of these duck-footed Leydeners, who daren't wink at a donkey lest he should bray.1901, H. Rider Haggard, chapter 5, in Lysbeth: A Tale of the Dutch. From the entry duck-footed
  • At Saddlers Springs the mules raised the welkin braying for their horse cobbers that had been unsaddled before them.1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 44. From the entry welkin
  • The same smell of unwashed bodies, of shoepolish and dirty floors; the same sound of typewriters and men yawning or braying over some joke.1974, Leonard St. Clair, The Emerald Trap, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN, page 193. From the entry shoepolish
  • There was no end to the surprises of this search: things brayed to pieces as if with a pestle and mortar, things easily smashable untouched.1910, H. de Vere Stacpoole, The Pools of Silence. From the entry smashable
  • There's an invisible element in the cabinet, a character that, without making itself known, gives coherence to and makes systemic all the braying of the government team.1995 June 30, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos [pseudonym; Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente], “Subcomandante Marcos: 1994–1996 – Spreading…. From the entry elementary, my dear Watson

Meaning of bray

  1. verb Of an animal (now chiefly of animals related to the ass or donkey, and the camel): to make its cry.
  2. verb To make a harsh, discordant sound like a donkey's bray.
  3. verb To make or utter (a shout, sound, etc.) discordantly, loudly, or in a harsh and grating manner.

Full definition of bray

Questions about bray in a sentence

How do you use bray in a sentence?
Bray is used as a verb and noun. For example: “Whenever I walked by, that donkey brayed at me.”
What is a short sentence with bray?
“Even at half volume, her high-pitched brays rattled teeth.”
What does bray mean?
Bray means of an animal (now chiefly of animals related to the ass or donkey, and the camel): to make its cry.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bray (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use bray in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/bray. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.