Hay

How to spell hay

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hay

What does hay mean?

1. nounGrass that has been cut and dried, used as food for horses, cattle, and other livestock.

Hay in a sentence

• The farmer stacked bales of hay in the barn before winter.

• The horses chewed contentedly on fresh hay in their stalls.

Where does hay come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from the Old English hieg or heg, meaning grass that has been cut and dried to feed animals. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives in the Dutch hooi and the German Heu, all of them carrying the same idea of mown fodder. The deeper root is thought to mean 'that which is cut down', linking it to the old verb for hewing or mowing, so the name describes the action that produces it. Although the spoken word sounds identical to the exclamation 'hey', that interjection is an unrelated late medieval shout, which is why the two are so easily swapped in writing. The farming sense has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, and the simple three-letter spelling has barely changed.

How the word is built

• hay (single root, from Old English hieg: grass that is mown for fodder)

Words that sound like hay

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• hey: An exclamation used to greet someone, attract attention, or express surprise.