Word.ws English Dictionary

silflay

/ˈsɪlf.leɪ/

silflay noun: the act of eating outdoors.

Noun

silflay (uncountable)

  1. The act of eating outdoors.
    • Rabbits were out on silflay, and fat spiders hung motionless in the centre of damp webs.1981, Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall, The Trials of Worzel Gummidge, Puffin, →ISBN, page 171
    • Picnickers, golden eagles and bunnies sunning themselves on silflay will therefore be glad that FoE has drawn up a set of guidelines for local authorities and a code of conduct for ATB users.1984, Town and Country Planning, volume 53, number 10, page 287

Origin of silflay

Borrowed from Lapine silflay, coined by Richard Adams in Watership Down as part of the fictional language Lapine, which in the story is spoken by rabbits. The word silflay (“to eat outdoors”) is derived from silf (“outdoors”) + flay (“food”).

Questions about silflay

What does silflay mean?
Silflay means the act of eating outdoors.
What part of speech is silflay?
Silflay is a noun.
How do you pronounce silflay?
Silflay is pronounced /ˈsɪlf.leɪ/.

Words near silflay in the dictionary

  1. silf
  2. silfe
  3. Silfies
  4. Silfieses
  5. silfium
  6. silflay
  7. silgreen
  8. Silguero
  9. Silgueros
  10. Silhan
  11. Silhillian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: silflay (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: “silflay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/silflay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.