dray

See also: Dray

English

This dray is used in parades, so it is kept washed. Otherwise drays are now rare because lorries have supplanted them.

Pronunciation

  • enPR: drā, IPA(key): /dɹeɪ/
    • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪ

Etymology 1

From Middle English draye, dreye, from Old English dræġe (“dragnet”), from Proto-Germanic *dragǭ. Cognate with Middle Low German drāge (“stretcher; dray”), Middle High German trage (“a litter”). Related to Old English dragan (“to pull; draw”). More at draw.

Noun

dray (plural drays)

  1. (historical) Any of various forms of low horse-drawn cart or wagon, often without sides or with removable sides, and used especially for heavy loads.
    • 1710 September 28, Joseph Addison, Whig-Examiner:
      Let him be brought into the field of election upon his dray-cart.
    • 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC:
      Standing foursquare in the heart of the town, at the intersection of the two main streets, a “jog” at each street corner left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays awaiting hire
    • 1911, ‘Steel Rudd’, The Book of Dan, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, published 1970, page 84:
      ‘I’ve seen him take things and lift them into a dray - things that - that - that - well, that you and me together couldn’t lift an inch!’
    • 1915, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, London: Duckworth & Co., […], →OCLC:
      The shooting motor cars, more like spiders in the moon than terrestrial objects, the thundering drays, the jingling hansoms, and little black broughams, made her think of the world she lived in.
  2. A kind of sledge or sled.
Coordinate terms
Derived terms
Translations
See also

Verb

dray (third-person singular simple present drays, present participle draying, simple past and past participle drayed)

  1. (transitive) To convey (goods) by dray.

Etymology 2

Unknown.

Noun

dray (plural drays)

  1. Alternative spelling of drey (“squirrel's nest”).
  2. (rare, collective) A group of squirrels.
    • 1927, Alfred Tresidder Sheppard, Here Comes an Old Sailor‎[1], page 246:
      He told how the herons always came at St. Valentine's to Felborough Wood and Chilham, and how the terns came in screaming gaggles when September was ending, and where the squirrels' drays were mostly found, and where he had seen a cete of badgers.
    • 2014, Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation‎[2], St. Martin's Publishing Group, page 221:
      You can imagine that families and extended families who nurtured the offspring of their family, i.e. their tribe, barrel, pod (whales), or dray (squirrels) do better, i.e. have more healthier offspring who go on to produce more offspring——children and grandchildren—than those who don't nurture so well.
    • (Can we date this quote?), 不人-Huhito, Huhito Fables Vol.13‎[3]:
      Among the squirrels that do not form a group, one squirrel with brave leadership took command of the squirrels and formed a dray.

References

Anagrams

Sranan Tongo

Verb

dray

  1. alternative spelling of drai
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