hay
- grass, clover, alfalfa, etc., cut and dried for use as forage.
- grass mowed or intended for mowing.
- Slang.
- a small sum of money: Twenty dollars an hour for doing very little certainly ain't hay.
- money: A thousand dollars for a day's work is a lot of hay!
- Slang. marijuana.
- to convert (plant material) into hay.
- to furnish (horses, cows, etc.) with hay.
- to cut grass, clover, or the like, and store for use as forage.
- a roll in the hay, Slang. sexual intercourse.
- hit the hay, Informal. to go to bed: It got to be past midnight before anyone thought of hitting the hay.
- in the hay, in bed; retired, especially for the night: By ten o'clock he's in the hay.
- make hay of, to scatter in disorder; render ineffectual: The destruction of the manuscript made hay of two years of painstaking labor.
- make hay while the sun shines, to seize an opportunity when it presents itself: If you want to be a millionaire, you have to make hay while the sun shines.Also make hay.
Origin of hay
hay1
- grass, clover, etc, cut and dried as fodder
- (in combination)a hayfield; a hayloft
- hit the hay slang to go to bed
- make hay of to throw into confusion
- make hay while the sun shines to take full advantage of an opportunity
- roll in the hay informal sexual intercourse or heavy petting
- to cut, dry, and store (grass, clover, etc) as fodder
- (tr) to feed with hay
Word Origin
hay2
hey
- a circular figure in country dancing
- a former country dance in which the dancers wove in and out of a circle
Word Origin
Hay
- Will. 1888–1949, British music-hall comedian, who later starred in films, such as Oh, Mr Porter! (1937)
Word Origin and History for hit the hay
hay
n.
"grass mown," Old English heg (Anglian), hieg, hig (West Saxon) "grass cut or mown for fodder," from Proto-Germanic *haujam (cf. Old Norse hey, Old Frisian ha, Middle Dutch hoy, German Heu, Gothic hawi "hay"), literally "that which is cut," or "that which can be mowed," from PIE *kau- "to hew, strike" (cf. Old English heawan "to cut;" see hew). Slang phrase hit the hay (pre-1880) was originally "to sleep in a barn;" hay in the general figurative sense of "bedding" (e.g. roll in the hay) is from 1903.
Idioms and Phrases with hit the hay
hit the hay
Also, hit the sack. Go to bed, as in I usually hit the hay after the eleven o'clock news, or I'm tired, let's hit the sack. The first colloquial expression dates from the early 1900s, the variant from about 1940.
hay
see hit the hay; make hay while the sun shines; roll in the hay; that ain't hay.