Chambers (1908)
Bay
Read this edition’s complete source entry.
This edition’s origin note
[These senses show a confusion of two distinct words, according to Murray: (1) to hold at bay = O. Fr. tenir a bay = It. tenere a bada, bay, bada, denoting the suspense indicated by the open mouth; (2) in the phrase 'to stand at bay,' the word points to O. Fr. abai, barking, bayer, to bark.]
Original source wording, not an independently verified *SET-U conclusion.The complete extracted entry
e-37683-2418Historical source text, not a reviewed *SET-U analysis. Claims and terminology belong to this edition.
Source locator ebook:37683;section:dictionary;paragraph:2454;continuation-paragraphs:0;html-characters:936267-937134
Where interpretation must slow down
- Historical scholarship from 1908; not current consensus or editorial verification.
- Historical text may contain offensive, obsolete or inaccurate language and classifications.
- Public-domain determination applies to the United States; other jurisdictions require separate confirmation.
- Chambers consulted earlier dictionaries including Skeat and the New English Dictionary; overlapping claims are not independent scholarly votes.
An old root, gloss or concordance number does not determine the meaning of every later use. A word’s origin and its modern meaning are different questions.
This page does not invent a manuscript attestation, a sound-change sequence, a modern scholarly verdict or a complete ancestor tree. Missing detail is a limit of this source record, not necessarily a limit of scholarship.
Find other records with this spelling →Edition, rights and traceability
Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language
Thomas Davidson (editor)
1908
Public-domain-US ↗ · United States
Publisher marks these historical texts public domain in the USA. Transformed book text excludes Gutenberg branding; source attribution is a bibliographic acknowledgment. No non-US public-domain determination is made.
The full extracted entry is rendered as plain text. Formatting and navigation are added by *SET-U; source wording is not silently rewritten as new analysis.
Coverage: the complete A–Z main-entry clusters and dictionary Addenda. Derivative words remain within their original entry clusters. Non-dictionary appendices and standalone illustrations are excluded.
Machine-source audit fields
- Source locator
- ebook:37683;section:dictionary;paragraph:2454;continuation-paragraphs:0;html-characters:936267-937134
- Source record SHA-256
- 3f3f5fd3970531a1d50a3ab72be371b5f4865b6e81d28ac6c7592bd097352cc8
- Records SHA-256
- fe553f4cc08e11f2f222d5bd4706ae9585f8951c8374a3edc0fcc03264dbbea9
- Published snapshot
- 00f489ccce5cccc78b796c10de36f4f0d18709073434ccf9285eb201d4ac39ca
- Acquired
- 2026-11-05T09:16:04.758Z · acquisition date, not first attestation
- Parser
- chambers-1908-1
- Source artifact ↗ · 3,407,997 bytes
555d2991c0d7cc611a61c79935db172efe6bb5becb074253788d90dafd0b6b08 - Source artifact ↗ · 537 bytes
781eff3f628c95b2a1cae38d73f1c2fa4672ffd6b08e38f65c1f5ca5a4e663ac - Source artifact ↗ · 3,773,892 bytes
912196a924c239e3ccc550bbb1f8515ce77bbd271ebf777b27fc468174ac32f8 - Source artifact ↗ · 537 bytes
781eff3f628c95b2a1cae38d73f1c2fa4672ffd6b08e38f65c1f5ca5a4e663ac - Source artifact ↗ · 2,804,092 bytes
4a647fbb3ce598efbe36554cdc02b070b3f5edf5ba2e41fcd36328f18a26c4e8 - Source artifact ↗ · 537 bytes
781eff3f628c95b2a1cae38d73f1c2fa4672ffd6b08e38f65c1f5ca5a4e663ac - Source artifact ↗ · 4,392,053 bytes
222c6725b7618cc03250863a64cce04c859c3378caa03b347376611c0668b33d - Source artifact ↗ · 537 bytes
781eff3f628c95b2a1cae38d73f1c2fa4672ffd6b08e38f65c1f5ca5a4e663ac