Bays

How to spell bays

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bays

What does bays mean?

1. nounBroad inlets of the sea where the shoreline curves inward.
2. nounDesignated sections, recesses, or compartments within a building or area.
3. verbLets out the deep, prolonged howl that a hound makes, especially when hunting.

Bays in a sentence

• noun

  The rugged coastline is dotted with sheltered bays and rocky headlands.

• noun

  The warehouse has numbered loading bays for incoming trucks.

• verb

  The hound bays loudly whenever it catches a fresh scent.

• noun

  Fishing boats took shelter in the calmer bays during the storm.

• noun

  All the parking bays near the entrance were already full.

• verb

  Every night the neighbour's dog bays at passing foxes.

Where does bays come from?

Language of origin: French

The singular bay has several distinct origins that English happened to merge into one spelling. The 'inlet of the sea' sense came through Old French baie, which traces back to Late Latin baia, a word for a harbour whose own roots are uncertain. The 'recess or compartment' sense (as in a parking bay or loading bay) also arrived via Old French baee, meaning an opening or gap, from a verb meaning 'to gape'. A separate bay, the laurel tree, comes from Old French baie meaning a berry, from Latin baca. Yet another bay, describing the howling cry of a hound, comes from Old French abaiier, an imitative word for barking, which also gives us the phrase 'to hold at bay'. All these entered English between the 1300s and 1400s, and because they collapsed into the same four letters, the modern plural and verb form 'bays' covers harbours, alcoves, laurels, and the cry of dogs alike; the spelling trap is simply its closeness to the unrelated word 'baize', the green cloth.

How the word is built

• bay (inlet/recess/laurel)
• -s (plural or third-person verb ending)