Tray

How to spell tray

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tray

What does tray mean?

1. nounA flat, shallow container with raised edges, used for carrying or holding food, drinks, or small items.

Tray in a sentence

• The waiter balanced a heavy tray of glasses above his shoulder.

• She sorted the loose screws into a small plastic tray on the workbench.

Where does tray come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English trēg or trīg, which named a flat wooden board used for carrying or holding things. Scholars connect it to a Germanic root meaning 'wood' or 'tree', the same family that gives us the modern word 'tree', because the earliest trays were simply shallow pieces of cut timber. Over the centuries the sense narrowed to the familiar flat, shallow receptacle with raised edges, used for carrying food, drinks, or small objects. The spelling settled with the -ay ending that English uses for many short native words, which is exactly why it sounds identical to 'trey', the card-game term for a three. Because tray is such an old everyday word, its form has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times.

How the word is built

• tray (from Old English trēg: a flat wooden board or container); single root, no affixes