Bray

Pronunciation

• enPR: breɪ, IPA: /bɹeɪ/
• Rhymes: -eɪ

From Middle French braire, from Vulgar Latin bragire, from Gaulish *bragu (compare Middle Irish braigid ("it crashes, explodes"), Breton breugiñ ("to bray"); akin to English break, Latin fragor ("crash"), frangere ("to break")).

Full definition of bray

Verb

1. (intransitive) Of a donkey, to make its cry.Whenever I walked by, that donkey brayed at me.
2. (intransitive) Of a camel, to make its cry.
3. (intransitive) To make a harsh, discordant sound like a donkey's bray.He threw back his head and brayed with laughter.
4. (transitive) To make or utter with a loud, discordant, or harsh and grating sound.
• MiltonArms on armour clashing, brayed
  Horrible discord.
• Sir Walter ScottAnd varying notes the war pipes brayed.
• GrayHeard ye the din of battle bray?

Noun

1. The cry of an ass or donkey.
2. The cry of a camel
3. Any harsh, grating, or discordant sound.
• JerroldThe bray and roar of multitudinous London.

Synonyms

• hee-haw

From Old French breier (Modern French broyer).

Verb

1. (now rare) To crush or pound, especially with a mortar.
• Bible, Proverbs xxvii. 22Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar, ... yet will not his foolishness depart from him.
• 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, in Kupperman 1988, p. 141:Their heads and shoulders are painted red with the roote Pocone brayed to powder, mixed with oyle ....
2. (British, chiefly Yorkshire) By extension, to hit someone or something.
• 2011, Sarah Hall (writer), Butchers Perfume from The Beautiful Indifference, Faber and Faber (2011), page 25:If anything he brayed him all the harder - the old family bull recognising his fighting days were close to over.