ray

Noun

ray (plural rays)

1. A beam of light or radiation.

   I saw a ray of light through the clouds.

   • 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros‎, London: Jonathan Cape, page 5:

     Strangely light and delicate was his frame and seeming, yet with a sense of slumbering power beneath, as the delicate peak of a snow mountain seen afar in the low red rays of morning.

2. (zoology) A rib-like reinforcement of bone or cartilage in a fish's fin.
3. (zoology) One of the spheromeres of a radiate, especially one of the arms of a starfish or an ophiuran.
4. (botany) A radiating part of a flower or plant; the marginal florets of a compound flower, such as an aster or a sunflower; one of the pedicels of an umbel or other circular flower cluster; radius.
5. (obsolete) Sight; perception; vision; from an old theory of vision, that sight was something which proceeded from the eye to the object seen.
   • 1728, [Alexander Pope], “(please specify the page)”, in The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. […], Dublin, London: […] A. Dodd, →OCLC:

     All eyes direct their rays / On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze.

6. (mathematics) A line extending indefinitely in one direction from a point.

Verb

ray (third-person singular simple present rays, present participle raying, simple past and past participle rayed)

1. (transitive) To emit something as if in rays.
   • 1889, Robert Browning, letter to Dr. Furnivall:

     I had no particular woman in my mind; certainly never intended to personify wisdom, philosophy, or any other abstraction; and the orb, raying colour out of whiteness, was altogether a fancy of my own.

2. (intransitive) To radiate as if in rays.
3. (transitive) To expose to radiation.
   • 1928, Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, page 219:

     Rats' eyes with ulcus serpens were successfully treated; one second of raying stopped the progress of the ulcer, which healed uninterruptedly.

Noun

ray (plural rays)

2. Any of the superorder Batoidea of marine fish with flat bodies, large wing-like fins, and whip-like tails.

Verb

ray (third-person singular simple present rays, present participle raying, simple past and past participle rayed)

1. (obsolete) To arrange. [14th–18th c.]
2. (now rare) To dress, array (someone). [from 14th c.]
3. (obsolete) To stain or soil; to defile. [16th–19th c.]
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     From his soft eyes the teares he wypt away, / And from his face the filth that did it ray […] .

Noun

ray (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) Array; order; arrangement; dress.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 50:

     spoyling all her geares and goodly ray

Noun

ray (plural rays)

1. The letter ⟨/⟩, one of two which represent the r sound in Pitman shorthand.

Noun

ray (plural rays)

1. (music) Alternative form of re

Derived terms

• rayke (“to kill”)

Derived terms

Declension