different between clayen vs clay

English

Etymology

From Middle English cleyen, equivalent to clay +? -en.

Adjective

clayen (not comparable)

1. Of clay; made of clay.
   • 1870, Richard Grant White, Words and Their Uses, Past and Present: A Study of the English Language, page 261

     It is difficult to see why silveren should have been dropped, and brazen and golden retained. Better return to stonen and clayen and yarnen, than lose golden and its fellows.

   • 2016, Alice Morse Earle, Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth, Krill Press via PublishDrive (?ISBN)

     Encircling in turn the best bearing trees, they drank from “clayen-cups,” and poured part of the contents on the ground under the trees. And while they wassailed the trees they sang:— “Here's to thee, old Apple tree! Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow, And whence thou mayst bear Apples enow! Hats full! caps full, Bushel—Bushel—sacks full, And my pockets full too.”

Translations

Anagrams

• Acelyn

English

Etymology

From Middle English cley, clay, from Old English cl?? (“clay”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaij, from Proto-Germanic *klajjaz (“clay”), from Proto-Indo-European *gley- (“to glue, paste, stick together”).

Cognate with Dutch klei (“clay”), Low German Klei (“clay”), German Klei, Danish klæg (“clay”); compare Ancient Greek ???? (glía), Latin gl?ten (“glue”) (whence ultimately English glue), Ukrainian ???? (glej, “clay”). Related also to clag, clog.

Pronunciation

• enPR: kl?, IPA^(key): /kle?/, [kl?e?]
• Rhymes: -e?

Noun

clay (usually uncountable, plural clays)

1. A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.

   • Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust […].

2. An earth material with ductile qualities.
3. (tennis) A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.

4. (biblical) The material of the human body.
   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Job 10:8-9:

     Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about...thou hast made me as the clay.

   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Isaiah 64:8:

     But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.

5. (geology) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
6. A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.
7. (firearms, informal) A clay pigeon.

   We went shooting clays at the weekend.

8. (informal) Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims

   Danzig is rightfully German clay.

Antonyms

• (material of the human body): soul, spirit

Hyponyms

• kaolin, kaoline
• ball clay
• fire clay
• potter's clay

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• alluvium

Verb

clay (third-person singular simple present clays, present participle claying, simple past and past participle clayed)

1. (transitive) To add clay to, to spread clay onto.
2. (transitive, of sugar) To purify using clay.
   • 1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 7: Of Colonies, Part 2: Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies,

     They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce.

   • 1809, Jonathan Williams, On the Process of Claying Sugar, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 6.

References

• Krueger, Dennis (December 1982). "Why On Earth Do They Call It Throwing?" Studio Potter volume 11, Number 1.[2] (etymology)
• “clay” in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1974 edition.
• Clay, New Webster Dictionary of English Language, 1980 edition.

Anagrams

• Lacy, acyl, lacy

Middle English

Noun

clay

1. Alternative form of cley (“clay”)