different between hay vs straw

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: h?, IPA^(key): /he?/
• Homophone: hey
• Rhymes: -e?

Etymology 1

From Middle English hey, from Old English h?e?, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawj? (compare West Frisian hea, Dutch hooi, German Heu, Norwegian høy), from *hawwan? (“to hew, cut down”). More at hew.

Noun

hay (countable and uncountable, plural hays)

1. (uncountable) Grass cut and dried for use as animal fodder.

   • Make hay while sunne shines.

   • 1857, Charles Louis Flint, Grasses and Forage Plants: A Practical Treatise […]

     Hay may be dried too much as well as too little.

2. (countable) Any mix of green leafy plants used for fodder.
3. (slang) Cannabis; marijuana.
   • 1947, William Burroughs, letter, 19 Feb 1947:

     I would like some of that hay. Enclose $20.

4. A net set around the haunt of an animal, especially a rabbit.

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• hay on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

hay (third-person singular simple present hays, present participle haying, simple past and past participle hayed)

1. To cut grasses or herb plants for use as animal fodder.
2. To lay snares for rabbits.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Huloet to this entry?)

Translations

See also

• bale
• straw

Etymology 2

From Middle English haye, heye, a conflation of Old English he?e (“hedge, fence”) and Old English ?ehæ? (“an enclosed piece of land”).

Noun

hay (plural hays)

1. (obsolete) A hedge.
2. (obsolete) A net placed around the lair or burrow of an animal.
3. (obsolete) An enclosure, haw.
4. (obsolete) A circular country dance.
   • 1594, Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, London: William Jones,^[1]

     My men like Satyres grazing on the lawnes,

     Shall with their Goate feete daunce an antick hay,

   • c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 1,^[2]

     I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play

     On the tabour to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.

Etymology 3

From the sound it represents, by analogy with other letters such as kay and gay. The expected form in English if the h had survived in the Latin name of the letter "h", h?.

Noun

hay (plural hays)

1. The letter for the h sound in Pitman shorthand.

Related terms

• aitch, the Latin letter for this sound

Anagrams

• AYH, YHA, Yah, yah

Lushootseed

Alternative forms

• haya

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ha?/

Verb

hay

1. to know

Malagasy

Etymology 1

Interjection

hay

1. truly!, indeed!

Etymology 2

Participle

hay

1. possible
2. known

Etymology 3

Noun

hay

1. (dialectal) burning

Etymology 4

Adjective

hay

1. (of land) exposed, bare

Etymology 5

Noun

hay

1. (Tankarana) an insect which damages rice crops

Middle English

Etymology 1

Noun

hay (plural hayes)

1. Alternative form of haye (“net”)

Etymology 2

Interjection

hay

1. Alternative form of hey (“hey”)

Etymology 3

Noun

hay (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of hey (“hay”)

Etymology 4

Pronoun

hay

1. Alternative form of he (“they”)

Etymology 5

Noun

hay

1. Alternative form of heye (“hedge”)

Etymology 6

Verb

hay

1. Alternative form of haven (“to have”)

Middle French

Verb

hay

1. first-person singular present indicative of hayr

Somali

Verb

hay

1. to hold

Spanish

Etymology

From Old Spanish ha ý (“it has there”) (compare Catalan hi ha and French il y a), from ha, third-person singular present of aver (“to have”), + ý, from Latin ib? (“there”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ai/, [?ai?]
• Rhymes: -ai
• Homophone: ay

Verb

hay

1. (impersonal) Present indicative form of haber, there is, there are

Derived terms

• no hay mal que por bien no venga
• no hay quien

Vietnamese

Pronunciation

• (Hà N?i) IPA^(key): [haj??]
• (Hu?) IPA^(key): [haj??]
• (H? Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [ha(?)j??]

Etymology 1

Cognate with Arem h?? ("to understand").

Verb

hay • (????)

1. (archaic or literary) to know; to get to know; to learn

   • H?i m? nó ?m v? n??c, bà n?i nó nói mua cho cái vé kh? h?i, t?i h?i ra sân bay v? l?i Hàn Qu?c thì m?i hay cái vé ?i có m?t chi?u.

     When his mother carried him in her arms back to Vietnam, his paternal grandmother said they had bought a return ticket for her, but she realised it was only a one-way ticket when she was at the airport, trying to return to Korea.

2. (‘hay’ + verb) to have a habit of (doing something)

Usage notes

• The sense of “to know” is now mostly used in fixed expressions, such as ??n ?âu hay ??n ?ó and cho hay (“to inform”), in the non-literary language.

Derived terms

Etymology 2

Adjective

hay • (????)

1. exciting, interesting, good

   Antonyms: d?, t?

Derived terms

Etymology 3

Conjunction

hay (là) (?)

1. or

Derived terms

See also

• ho?c

Walloon

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /haj/

Interjection

hay

1. go, let us go

English

Etymology

From Middle English straw, from Old English str?aw, from Proto-West Germanic *strau, from Proto-Germanic *straw? (“that which is strewn”). Cognate with Dutch stro, Walloon strin, German Stroh, Norwegian and Swedish strå, Albanian shtrohë (“kennel”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /st???/
• (US) IPA^(key): /st??/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /st??/

Noun

straw (countable and uncountable, plural straws)

1. (countable) A dried stalk of a cereal plant.
2. (uncountable) Such dried stalks considered collectively.
3. (countable) A drinking straw.
4. A pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.

5. (figuratively) Anything proverbially worthless; the least possible thing.
   • 1889, Robin Hood and the Tanner, Francis James Child (editor), The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 3, page 138:

     ‘For thy sword and thy bow I care not a straw,

     Nor all thine arrows to boot;

     If I get a knop upon thy bare scop,

     Thou canst as well shite as shoote.’

   • 1857, Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers:

     He also decided, which was more to his purpose, that Eleanor did not care a straw for him, and that very probably she did care a straw for his rival.

   • 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque:

     To be deeply interested in the accidents of our existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of human experience, rather leads a man to disregard precautions, and risk his neck against a straw.

Derived terms

• strawhead
• strawberry

Translations

Adjective

straw (not comparable)

1. Made of straw.

   Synonym: strawen

2. Of a pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
3. (figuratively) Imaginary, but presented as real.

Translations

Derived terms

See also

Verb

straw (third-person singular simple present straws, present participle strawing, simple past and past participle strawed)

1. To lay straw around plants to protect them from frost.
2. (obsolete, slang) To sell straws on the streets in order to cover the giving to the purchaser of things usually banned, such as pornography.

Anagrams

• Swart, swart, warts

Middle English

Alternative forms

• strau, strawe, straugh, strau?, strawwe, stre, stree, stra, straa, strey, streaw, strew, streuw

Etymology

From Old English str?aw, from Proto-Germanic *straw?. Some forms are influenced by Old Norse strá.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /strau?/, /stre?/
• (Northern ME) IPA^(key): /str??/

Noun

straw (plural strawes or stren)

1. The remaining plant material after cultivation; halm, straw.
2. An individual piece or section of straw.
3. (figuratively) Anything slight or worthless; the least possible thing.
4. (rare) A measure of weight for candlewax.

Related terms

• strawbery
• strawen

Descendants

• English: straw
• Scots: strae
• Yola: stre, strew

References

• “strau, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-19.

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /straf/

Verb

straw

1. second-person singular imperative of strawi?

Noun

straw f

1. genitive plural of strawa

Further reading

• straw in Polish dictionaries at PWN