belay

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (1)  · 
“
Avast and belay, my hearties!

View all »
Definitions (17)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (7)

  1. transitive verb Nautical To secure or make fast (a rope, for example) by winding on a cleat or pin.
  2. transitive verb To secure (a mountain climber, for example) at the end of a length of rope.
  3. transitive verb To cause to stop.
4 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (6)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Slowly, discovering that the main mandibles on the right side hung useless, I hauled the climber back up the rope toward the belay, and saw when I reached it how the harness had almost worn through the pillar of ice. —  F ;SF; - vol 091 issue 04-05 - October-November 1996
  • Kanakaredes instantly braced himself in full-belay posture, slammed his ice axe deep into the ice beneath him, and wrapped the line around it twice before the thirty feet or so of slack between him and Paul had played out. —  WorldsEnough ;Time
  • Come to think it, don't be sayin '"belay," either.
  • REI's experienced, belay-trained staff and state-of-the-art climbing structures will challenge and entertain climbers of all ages. —  Today's Tribune-Review
  • He was anchored at the belay, but, his knot was completely untied.
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 164 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English bileggen, to surround, from Old English belecgan; see legh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Middle English beleggen, bileggen, from Anglo-Saxon belecgan, lay upon, cover, charge (= Dutch beleggen, cover, overlay; as a nautical term, belay; = Old High German bilegen, Middle High German G. belegen), from be-, about, around, by, + lecgan, lay. The nautical use is perhaps due to the D. In the sense of ‘surround,’ cf. beleaguer.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/bəˈleɪ/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a year.

Recently looked up

mexican · quasi-religious · useful · intellectuals · goalpost

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich