Definition of "clay"

clay

/kleɪ/

noun
usually uncountable, plural clays
1. A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.
  Quotations
  Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust […].
  1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915
2. An earth material with ductile qualities.
3. (tennis) A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.
4. (biblical) The material of the human body.
  Quotations
  Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about...thou hast made me as the clay.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Job 10:8-9
  But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Isaiah 64:8
5. (geology) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
6. A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.
7. (firearms, informal) A clay pigeon.
8. (informal) Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims
9. A moth, Mythimna ferrago
verb
third-person singular simple present clays, present participle claying, simple past and past participle clayed
1. (transitive) To add clay to, to spread clay onto.
2. (transitive, of sugar) To purify using clay.
  Quotations
  They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce.
  1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 7: Of Colonies, Part 2: Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies
  1809, Jonathan Williams, “On the Process of Claying Sugar”, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, volume 6
  The Portuguese had mastered the technique of claying sugar, and other European nations tried to learn the secrets from them.
  1985, Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835‎, page 200

Definition of "clay"

clay

noun

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations