Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A shallow flat receptacle with a raised edge or rim, used for carrying, holding, or displaying articles.
  • noun A shallow flat receptacle with its contents.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Trouble; annoyance; anger.
  • To betray.
  • noun A trough, open box, or similar vessel used for different domestic and industrial purposes. Specifically
  • noun A flat shallow vessel or utensil with slightly raised edges, employed for holding bread, dishes, glassware, silver, cards, etc., and for other household uses.
  • noun A wide shallow coverless box of wood or cardboard, used in museums for packing and displaying specimens of natural history.
  • noun A shallow and usually rectangular dish or pan of crockery ware, gutta-percha, papier-mâché, metal, or other material, used in museums for holding wet (alcoholic) specimens when these are overhauled for study, etc. Similar trays are used for ova in fish-culture, for many chemical operations, in photography, etc.
  • noun A hod.
  • noun A hurdle.
  • noun Deceit; stratagem.
  • To grieve; annoy.
  • noun Same as trey.
  • noun The third branch, snag, or point of a deer's antler.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A small trough or wooden vessel, sometimes scooped out of a block of wood, for various domestic uses, as in making bread, chopping meat, etc.
  • noun A flat, broad vessel on which dishes, glasses, etc., are carried; a waiter; a salver.
  • noun A shallow box, generally without a top, often used within a chest, trunk, box, etc., as a removable receptacle for small or light articles.
  • transitive verb obsolete To betray; to deceive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete Trouble; annoyance; anger.
  • verb transitive, obsolete To grieve; annoy.
  • verb transitive, obsolete To betray.
  • noun A small, typically rectangular or round, flat, rigid object upon which things are carried.
  • noun A flat carrier for items being transported.
  • noun The items on a full tray.
  • noun A component of a device into which an item is placed for use in the device's operations.
  • noun computing, graphical user interface, informal A notification area used for icons and alerts.
  • verb transitive To place items on a tray.
  • verb intransitive To slide down a snow-covered hill on a tray from a cafeteria.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an open receptacle for holding or displaying or serving articles or food

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English trēg; see deru- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English traye, treie, from Old English trega ("misfortune, misery, trouble, grief, pain"), from Proto-Germanic *tregô, *mourning, from Proto-Indo-European *dregʰ- (“unwilling, sullen, slack”). Cognate with Icelandic tregi ("sorrow, grief"), Gothic  (trigo, "grief").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English trayen, treien, from Old English tregian ("to trouble, harass, vex"), from Proto-Germanic *tregōnan (“to become tedious, become lazy, sadden”), from Proto-Indo-European *dregʰ- (“unwilling, sullen, slack”).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English trayen, from Old French trair ("to betray"), from Latin tradō ("hand over, betray"). More at betray.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English treye, from Old English trēġ, trīġ, from Proto-Germanic *traujan (“wooden vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *drAuk-, *drAuḱ- (“a kind of vessel”), from *dóru (“tree”). Cognate with Old Norse treyja ("carrier"), Old Swedish trø ("wooden grain measure"), Low German Treechel ("dough trough"), Ancient Greek  (drouítē, "tub, vat"), Sanskrit  (droṇa, "trough"). More at tree.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tray.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.