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''dray'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260202202216-00-⌔

dray - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

dray (plural drays)

  • (historical) Any of various forms of low horse-drawn cart or wagon, often without sides or with removable sides, and used especially for heavy loads.
    • ✤ Let him be brought into the field of election upon his dray -cart.1
    • ✤ Standing foursquare in the heart of the town, at the intersection of the two main streets, a “jog” at each street corner left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays awaiting hire2
    • ✤ The shooting motor cars, more like spiders in the moon than terrestrial objects, the thundering drays, the jingling hansoms, and little black broughams, made her think of the world she lived in.3
  • A kind of sledge or sled.

Verb

dray (third-person singular simple present drays, present participle draying, simple past and past participle drayed)

  • (transitive) To convey (goods) by dray.

Noun

dray (plural drays)

  • Alternative spelling of drey (“squirrel’s nest”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: drā, IPA: /dɹeɪ/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -eɪ

Etymology 1

From Middle English draye, dreye, from Old English dræġe (“dragnet”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡dragǭ. Cognate with Middle Low German drāge (“stretcher; dray”), Middle High German trage (“a litter”). Related to Old English dragan (“to pull; draw”). More at draw.

Etymology 2

Unknown.

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1710 September 28, Joseph Addison, Whig-Examiner: ↩

  2. 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1915, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, London: Duckworth & Co., […], →OCLC: ↩

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