Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Nautical To secure or make fast (a rope, for example) by winding on a cleat or pin.
- v. To secure (a mountain climber, for example) at the end of a length of rope.
- v. To cause to stop.
- v. To be made secure.
- v. Used in the imperative as an order to stop: Belay there!
- n. The securing of a rope on a rock or other projection during mountain climbing.
- n. An object, such as a rock, to which a mountain climber's rope can be secured.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To surround; environ; inclose.
- To overlay; adorn.
- To besiege; invest; surround.
- To lie in wait for in order to attack; hence, to block up or obstruct.
- Nautical, to fasten, or make fast, by winding round a belaying-pin, cleat, or cavel: applied chiefly to running rigging.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, obsolete To surround; environ; inclose.
- v. transitive, obsolete To overlay; adorn.
- v. transitive, obsolete To besiege; invest; surround.
- v. transitive, obsolete To lie in wait for in order to attack; block up or obstruct.
- v. transitive To make (a rope) fast by turning it round a fastening point such as a cleat or piton.
- v. transitive To secure (a person) to a rope or (a rope) to a person.
- v. transitive To lay aside; stop; cancel.
- v. intransitive, nautical The general command to stop or cease.
- v. intransitive, nautical To make a line fast by turns around a cleat, pin, or bitt.
- n. climbing The securing of a rope to a rock or other projection.
- n. climbing The object to which a rope is secured.
- n. climbing A location at which a climber stops and builds an anchor with which to secure his/or her partner.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. obsolete To lay on or cover; to adorn.
- v. (Naut.) To make fast, as a rope, by taking several turns with it round a pin, cleat, or kevel.
- v. obsolete To lie in wait for with a view to assault. Hence: to block up or obstruct.
WordNet 3.0
- v. fasten a boat to a bitt, pin, or cleat
- n. something to which a mountain climber's rope can be secured
- v. turn a rope round an object or person in order to secure it or him
Etymologies
- From Middle English beleggen, bileggen, from Old English belecgan ("to cover, invest, surround, afflict, attribute to, charge with, accuse"), equivalent to be- + lay. Cognate with Dutch beleggen ("to cover, overlay, belay"), German belegen ("to cover, occupy, belay"), Swedish belägga ("to pave"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English bileggen, to surround, from Old English belecgan; see legh- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Yet quite often such words, when they are verbs, were once of the common stock of the language, as in the case of "belay," and it has happened that the sailor alone has been left to keep them alive.”
“In comes the rope with a "Yo! heave ho!" and a jerk, until the "belay" sung out by the mate signifies that the work is done.”
“Care was taken, however, this time to make fast the halliard rope with a proper "belay"; and although Snowball might have deserved a caution to be more vigilant for the future, it was not deemed necessary to administer it, as it was thought the peril out of which they had so miraculously escaped would prove to him a sufficient reminder.”
“We didn't get to use words like "belay" or "glissade" but we felt victorious just the same.”
“It was a hot mid-August afternoon two weeks into the trip and one of my three NOLS instructors, Bean Bowers -- bad-ass, wise-cracking and always over-caffeinated -- chose me to belay him while he climbed.”
“I refused, humiliated and ashamed that I even had the chutzpah to belay Bean, let alone allow him to fall on my watch.”
“But just to be on the safe side and belay any possible future arguments I have recently purchased a mobile home in a trailer park.”
“And there is the less obvious answer in that analogy of a belay team.”
The Huffington Post: Stacy Bare: Turning to Nature After Returning From Iraq
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘belay’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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phrontistery - b
List of words from phrontistery.info
blandish, blazon, blench, blendling, blendure, blewit, blunge, blype, borné, borsella, borzoi, boscage and 582 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Climbing lingo
Lingo that immediately classifies you as a climbing insider
crimp, gaston, beta, sherpa, Bonnington, Chouinard, The Gunks, hexentrics, The Dru, Black Ice Culoir, Fitzroy, Black Diamond Equ... and 38 more...
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fix
set, anchor, mend, rivet, moor, clinch, emend, circumfix, fixated, cefixime, fixed cost, confix and 87 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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Belistful
Tubey or not tubey.
belittle, bedazzle, besiege, besmirch, bespeckle, beget, bemoan, befuddle, befriend, become, besot, becloud and 596 more...
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strangelyrouge's Words
glockenspiel, gewgaw, jetsam, flotsam, gripe, grab, wench, whilst, betwixt, hither, thither, yonder and 1034 more...
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the_grene_kni3t's Words
acuarela, sesquipedalian, capital, métier, chap, cove, guv, guv'nor, ratiocination, transatlantique, ineffable, aural and 142 more...
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madmelanie's Words
monkey, folderol, snark, snarky, flibbertigibbet, faith, asshat, pirouette, avuncular, exegesis, memento mori, verisimilitude and 379 more...
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Time for a new list!
abrupt, erupt, rupture, sync, appropinquity, heterochromia, homochromatic, monochromatic, willy nilly, nitty gritty, kowtow, wonton and 455 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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tomax's Words
legerdemain, yayo, extravasation, wont, faze, coxswain, concomitant, enclave, unguent, rhabdomyolysis, effluent, puerile and 432 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, B
bloviate, bejesus, brouhaha, behoove, bodacious, bamboozle, banshee, bub, bolus, blob, bubbly, bleb and 414 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1406 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for belay.

dailyword This word is used in Star Trek a lot. Jun 21, 2012
bilby "Police have recovered the body of a man in his 70s after his car crashed into Melbourne's Yarra River. It is believed he lost control of the car while driving along Yarra Boulevard at Kew, crashing through a fence and down an embankment. It landed in the water 70 metres below.
Sergeant Simon Brand says getting access to the scene was difficult. '(It was a) very steep embankment,' he said. 'We actually had to rope belay the diver down to the water.'
- Driver's body recovered after Yarra River plunge, abc.net.au, 21 Nov 2011. Nov 21, 2011
chained_bear "'Boat your oars,' said Jack. 'Clap on to the halliard — no, the halliard. God's death — haul away. Bear a hand, Stephen. Belay. Catch a couple of turns round the kevel — the kevel.'
"The scow gave a violent lurch. Jack dropped all, scrambled forward, caught two turns round the kevel and slid back to the tiller. The sail filled, he brought the wind a little abaft the beam, and the scow headed out to sea.
"'You are cursed snappish tonight, Jack,' said Stephen. 'How do you expect me to understand your altumal cant, without pondering on it? I do not expect you to understand medical jargon, without giving you time to consider the etymology, for all love.'
"'Not to know the odds between a halliard and a sheet, after all these years at sea: it passes human understanding,' said Jack.
"'You are a reasonably civil, complaisant creature on dry land,' said Stephen, but the moment you are afloat you become pragmatical and absolute, a bashaw — do this, do that, gluppit the prawling strangles, there — no longer a social being at all. It is no doubt the effect of the long-continued habit of command; but it cannot be considered amiable.'
"Diana said nothing: she had a considerable experience and she knew that if men were to be at all tolerable they must be fed..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Fortune of War, p. 272 Feb 6, 2008