Ray

How to spell ray

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ray

What does ray mean?

1. nounA narrow beam of light or other radiation travelling out from a source.
2. nounA flat-bodied cartilaginous sea fish with broad wing-like fins and a long tail.
3. nounIn mathematics, a line that starts at one fixed point and extends in one direction without end.

Ray in a sentence

• A single ray of sunlight broke through the heavy curtains.

• Divers watched a large ray glide across the sandy seabed.

• The teacher drew a ray starting at the origin and pointing right.

• The dentist used a thin ray of light to inspect the back tooth.

• The aquarium kept one spotted ray in the shallow touch pool.

• Each ray in the diagram begins at the same fixed point.

Where does ray come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin radius, which literally meant a staff, a spoke of a wheel, or the beam of light that seems to radiate outward from a single point. It travelled into English through Old French rai during the 1300s, keeping the sense of a thin line of light shining from the sun or another source. Over time the spelling settled as the short, simple 'ray' while the original Latin radius was borrowed separately for the geometric line and the bone of the forearm. The flat sea creature called a ray takes its name from the unrelated Latin raia, an old word for that fish, so two different roots ended up sharing one spelling. The same radius family also gives us 'radiant', 'radiate', and 'radio', all of which keep the idea of something spreading out from a centre.

How the word is built

• single root ray (from Latin radius: beam, spoke, rod)