Clay

How to spell clay

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clay

What does clay mean?

1. nounA heavy, sticky natural earth that becomes soft and mouldable when wet and hardens when fired or dried.

Clay in a sentence

• The potter shaped the wet clay into a bowl on the wheel.

• Heavy clay soil drains poorly and stays waterlogged after rain.

Where does clay come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Clay comes from the Old English clæg, which named the heavy, sticky earth that potters and brickmakers have always prized. That word traces back to a Germanic root meaning 'to stick' or 'to cling', the same sense of stickiness that also underlies the words 'cleave' (to adhere) and 'clammy'. Related forms appear across the Germanic languages, including Dutch klei and German Klei, all describing the same dense, mouldable soil. The word has stayed remarkably stable in form for well over a thousand years, and the spelling settled into the modern 'clay' as English standardised the 'ay' ending for that vowel sound. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, it carries no real spelling trap, which is unusual for such an ancient native word.

How the word is built

• clay (whole word, from Old English clæg meaning sticky earth)