spray
/spɹeɪ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.18 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of numerous commercial products, including paints, cosmetics, and insecticides, that are dispensed from containers in this manner.
Countable
noun
A jet of fine medicated vapour, used either as an application to a diseased part or to charge the air of a room with a disinfectant or a deodorizer.
Countable
noun
A side channel or branch of the runner of a flask, made to distribute the metal to all parts of the mold.
Countable
Example Sentences
- "The sailor could feel the spray from the waves."
- "A strong sirocco was blowing the spray from the waves as far as the little café, whose glass doors were shut. The café reeked of brewing sage and human beings whose breath steamed the windows because of the cold outside."
- "Nurse Cramer had a cute nose and a radiant, blooming complexion dotted with fetching sprays of adorable freckles that Yossarian detested."
- "This approach would be altered for an optimal omelette based exploit. One would spray the heap with the omelette code solely, then load a single copy of the additional shellcode eggs into memory outside the target region for the spray."
- "On match days he could give a good spray, and in many ways he was an old-fashioned coach, having learned a lot of his approach from Ron Barassi."
- "Expectations of what they will put up with have changed and a big spray probably doesn't have the effect it used to have. It certainly worked for me, I would get really aggressive and get fired up 'cause it's a motivational device they used."
Etymology
From Middle Dutch sprāien, sprayen, spraeyen (“to spray, sprinkle, spread”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sprēwijaną (“to spray, sprinkle”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)per- (“to sow, scatter”). Cognate with Middle High German spræjen, spræwen (“to squirt, spray, dust, splash, straw”), Danish dialectal språe (“to open up, burst forth”), Swedish dialectal språ (“to sprout, shoot forth, burst”), Norwegian dialectal spra, spræ (“to splash, splatter, spout, burst forth”), Dutch sproeien (“to spray, sprinkle”), German sprühen (“to spray, sparkle”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: spraien, *sprēwijaną, *(s)per-, spray, *spræġ
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
bear spray
bidet spray
body spray
breath spray
bug spray
capiscum spray
capsicum spray
cooking spray