• enPR: klā, IPA: /kleɪ/, [kl̥eɪ]

clay (uncountable)

1. A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.
   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384 ↗:

     Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust […].

2. An earth material with ductile qualities.
3. (tennis) A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.

   The French Open is played on clay.

4. (biblical) The material of the human body.
   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Book of Job 10:8-9:

     Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about...thou hast made me as the clay.

   • 1611, Old Testament, King James Version, Book of Isaiah 64:8:

     But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.

5. (geology) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
6. A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.
7. (firearms, informal) A clay pigeon.

   We went shooting clays at the weekend.

8. (informal) Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims

   Danzig is rightfully German clay.

• (material of the human body) soul, spirit

• French: argile
• German: Lehm, Ton
• Italian: argilla, creta
• Portuguese: argila
• Russian: гли́на
• Spanish: arcilla, barro

• French: terre battue
• German: Asche
• Portuguese: saibro
• Spanish: arcilla

clay (clays, present participle claying; past and past participle clayed)

1. (transitive) To add clay to, to spread clay onto.
2. (transitive, of sugar) To purify using clay.
   • 1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 7: Of Colonies, Part 2: Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies,

     They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce.

   • 1809, Jonathan Williams, On the Process of Claying Sugar ↗, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 6.

• IPA: /kleɪ/

1. Surname
2. A male given name.
   • 1968 Patrick White, Clay, in The Burnt Ones, Penguin Books, page 114:

     When he was about five years old some kids asked Clay why his mother had called him that. And he did not know. But began to wonder.

3. A male given name.
4. A town/county seat in Clay County, West Virginia.
5. Ellipsis of Clay County#English|Clay County
6. CDP in Sacramento County, California.