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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

Barbour, who sells beef, pork and milk, has watched the cost of trucking hay from three counties away rise around 15%.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 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 hosted their wedding celebrations at Daylesford House on 30 July the following year, setting up marquees and hay bales in the grounds.

From BBC ● Sep. 14, 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

Once he was gone, Rae Ellen slid off the hay bale and brought her sack over to me.

From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney

The superintendent of the Cannock Chase Methodist Church Circuit, Rev Samantha Hagerman, said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with family, friends and emergency services affected by the incident near Cheslyn Hay yesterday."

From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026

Emergency services were called to land off Strawberry Lane, near Cheslyn Hay, Staffordshire, at 08:45 BST on Saturday, to a report of a child in cardiac arrest.

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026

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

The younger Swanburne girls had lived in terror of her bloodcurdling scream, which was put to good use every autumn at Heathcote’s annual Haunted Hay Maze festival.

From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood

Related Words

• fodder
• grass