Jay

How to spell jay

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce jay

What does jay mean?

1. nounA noisy, brightly coloured woodland bird of the crow family, known for its harsh call.

Jay in a sentence

• A jay flashed pink and blue feathers as it crossed the garden.

• The jay buried acorns under the oak tree all autumn.

Where does jay come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes into English through Old French 'jai', which named the bright, noisy woodland bird, and that French word goes back to the Late Latin 'gaius'. Many scholars connect 'gaius' to the common Roman personal name Gaius, in much the way that English speakers later attached human names to other birds such as the robin, the magpie (originally 'Mag', a pet form of Margaret) and the jackdaw. An alternative idea links the sound to Latin words for chattering or gaiety, fitting the bird's loud, restless call. The bird sense settled in English during the 1300s, and the spelling steadied as the simple three letter 'jay'. The old insulting sense of a foolish or gullible person, which lies behind 'jaywalking', grew from the idea of a country bumpkin gawping like the wide eyed bird.

How the word is built

• jay (a single root word; the modern English noun, originally from a Latin personal name)