quay

Pronunciation: /kiː/

The English word “quay” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

A stone or concrete structure on navigable water used for loading and unloading vessels; a wharf.

verb

To land or tie up at a quay or similar structure, especially used in the phrase "quay up".

Etymology

The current spelling replaced the spelling key in the 1690s to emulate the spelling but (at least originally) not the pronunciation of the equivalent modern French quai. From Middle English kay, key, kaye, keye, from Old French kay, cail, from Gaulish *kagyum, cagiíun (“enclosure”), from Proto-Celtic *kagyom (“pen, enclosure”) (compare Welsh cae (“field”)), from Proto-Indo-European *kagʰyóm…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “quay” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.