Bray

How to spell bray

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bray

What does bray mean?

1. verbTo make the loud, harsh cry characteristic of a donkey, or any similarly grating sound.
2. nounThe loud, harsh sound made by a donkey or something resembling it.

Bray in a sentence

• verb

  The farm donkeys bray loudly whenever the feed bucket appears.

• noun

  A long bray from the stable woke the whole campsite.

• verb

  Old car horns seem to bray rather than beep.

• noun

  The trumpet let out a flat bray instead of a clear note.

Where does bray come from?

Language of origin: French

The familiar sense of bray, the harsh cry of a donkey, comes into Middle English as brayen from the Old French verb braire, which simply meant 'to cry out' or 'to wail'. That French verb is thought to descend from a Vulgar Latin form bragere, and many scholars suspect an underlying Celtic root imitating a loud, rough noise, which would make the word partly echoic of the sound itself. It entered English in the 1300s and quickly attached to the unmistakable call of the donkey, while keeping a wider sense of any loud, grating sound such as a trumpet or a laugh. A second, now rare verb bray, meaning to crush or pound something in a mortar, is a separate word borrowed from the Old French breier or broyer, and it survives mainly in old recipes and pharmacy texts. Because the word is short and follows the regular -ay pattern seen in 'day' and 'play', the spelling itself is straightforward; the only real trap is choosing the right vowel team.

How the word is built

• bray (single root, from Old French braire: to cry out)