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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  

[hey] / 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  

[hey] / 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

Her father, Bill Huddleston, oversaw the farming of cattle, hay, tobacco and other crops, and built the home where her mother still lives.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026

"Once upon a time curlews would have nested in almost any hay meadow," he told the BBC.

From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026

Farms in the Imperial Valley, which produce crops from hay to vegetables, depend entirely on the river.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026

The property is also fully equipped as an equestrian facility, boasting a 3,800-square-foot horse barn, with eight stalls, a tack room, and a hay loft.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 2026

Remembering that Mr. Johnson said Buttons should be eating hay, Nancy looked around for a bale.

From "Pony Problems: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, #3" by Carolyn Keene

Lewis Hay III, who had been lead independent director, will now serve as chairman.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026

Price, in conjunction with fellow analysts Duncan Hay and Ashley Kielty, set out his case for copper in a report published Tuesday with the punchy title, “Copper…. Better than gold.”

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026

She describes a “popular annual cocktail buffet at the Hay Adams Hotel on the rooftop overlooking the White House” on the night of Trump’s UFC cage fight on the White House lawn.

From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2026

What is The Hay Wain and why is it so significant?

From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026

That same year she enrolled in the University of Michigan under a John Hay Whitney Fellowship, a program designed to match talented Negro scholars with the country’s most competitive graduate programs.

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly

Related Words

• fodder
• grass