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• hay
  hay

  noun

  grass, clover, alfalfa, etc., cut and dried for use as forage.
• Hay
  Hay

  noun

  John Milton, 1838–1905, U.S. statesman and author.

hay

¹ American  

[hay] / heɪ /

noun

1. grass, clover, alfalfa, etc., cut and dried for use as forage.

2. grass mowed or intended for mowing.

3. Slang.

   1. a small sum of money.

      Twenty dollars an hour for doing very little certainly ain't hay.

   2. money.

      A thousand dollars for a day's work is a lot of hay!

4. Slang. marijuana.

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verb (used with object)

1. to convert (plant material) into hay.

2. to furnish (horses, cows, etc.) with hay.

verb (used without object)

1. to cut grass, clover, or the like, and store for use as forage.

idioms

1. make hay of, to scatter in disorder; render ineffectual.

   The destruction of the manuscript made hay of two years of painstaking labor.

2. make hay while the sun shines, to seize an opportunity when it presents itself: Also make hay.

   If you want to be a millionaire, you have to make hay while the sun shines.

3. in the hay, in bed; retired, especially for the night.

   By ten o'clock he's in the hay.

4. hit the hay, to go to bed.

   It got to be past midnight before anyone thought of hitting the hay.

5. a roll in the hay, sexual intercourse.

Hay ² American  

[hay] / heɪ /

noun

1. John Milton, 1838–1905, U.S. statesman and author.

2. a river in NW Canada, flowing NE to the Great Slave Lake. 530 miles (853 km) long.

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hay ¹ British  

/ heɪ /

noun

1. 1. grass, clover, etc, cut and dried as fodder

   2. ( in combination )

      a hayfield

      a hayloft

2. slang to go to bed

3. to throw into confusion

4. to take full advantage of an opportunity

5. informal sexual intercourse or heavy petting

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verb

1. to cut, dry, and store (grass, clover, etc) as fodder

2. (tr) to feed with hay

hay ² British  

/ heɪ /

noun

1. a circular figure in country dancing

2. a former country dance in which the dancers wove in and out of a circle

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Hay ³ British  

/ heɪ /

noun

1. Will. 1888–1949, British music-hall comedian, who later starred in films, such as Oh, Mr Porter! (1937)

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hay More Idioms  

1. see hit the hay; make hay while the sun shines; roll in the hay; that ain't hay.

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Other Word Forms

• hayey
  adjective
• unhayed
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of hay

before 900; Middle English; Old English hēg; cognate with German Heu, Old Norse hey, Gothic hawi. See hew

Explanation

Hay is a type of dried grass that's fed to certain farm animals. You might buy bags of hay to feed your pet rabbit, who likes to nibble on it. Hay is a mixture of grassy plants grown in fields, cut or mown, bundled in bales, and stored until ready to be fed to livestock. Hay and straw aren't the same thing; hay is cut when it's green, while straw is made up of the leftover dried stems and leaves of plants that have been harvested. And while some animals feed on straw too, hay is more nutritious. The Old English root is heg, "grass cut or mown."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hay Hay

He has cut back hay deliveries to local clients and is meeting up with friends less frequently.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026

A project to preserve vulnerable vegetation and wildlife will see hundreds of wildflower plants introduced to an upland hay meadow.

From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026

Fears about software disruptions have subsided, leaving shares of Microsoft, which is also making hay with its Azure cloud division, up 28% over the past three months.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026

They compared imported varieties for such traits as maturity, yield, plant form and suitability for seed or hay, selecting strains that showed promise for cultivation in the United States.

From Salon ● Sep. 13, 2026

The bare and lonely fact of it made her feel like a solitary stalk of grass left waving forlornly in a field after the thresher had come and harvested all the rest for hay.

From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood

Ken Hay: 'Sometimes you wondered, will I ever get home?'

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

He’s a law professor at George Washington University and a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, so like Hay, he knows a bit about antitrust enforcement.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026

During the three-month march, Hay said he once "lay down to die" after it became too painful to continue, but two friends turned back for him and lifted him with an "arm around each shoulder".

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

The settlement might not give the entertainment industry all it hoped for but it was “a fight worth fighting,” said George Hay, a professor at Cornell Law School and a former attorney with the U.S.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026

Hay stored in a section of the building had caught fire and caused much damage before firemen had arrived and put out the blaze.

From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson

Related Words

• fodder
• grass