maying

Pluralmayings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of may, in the old-fashioned sense of gathering spring flowers or celebrating May Day.

   They spent the holiday maying through the lanes and hedgerows.

   Young people were maying at dawn, returning with branches of flowering hawthorn.

   Note

   This participle cannot belong to the familiar may. The modal of permission and possibility, and even its old senses of being strong or able, never takes -ing, so nobody says "maying to leave." It belongs instead to the festive verb meaning "to celebrate May Day," the same may behind the old springtime revels. Use it for people out keeping the holiday, as in maying at dawn.

2. 2
   nounhistoricalcountable or uncountable

   The traditional springtime celebrations and revels held to mark May Day.

   The whole village turned out for the maying, with garlands strung between the cottages.

   After the maying, the young couples wandered home through dew-soaked meadows.

   Similarfestivities, revels

   Note

   A word that now lives mostly in history, and it once came with its own idiom. In Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur (1485), Guinevere plans to "ryde on mayeng" into the woods and fields beside Westminster. By John Stow's A Survey of London (1598), parishes hold their "several mayings" and fetch in maypoles, so the noun takes a plural. It comes from May plus -ing, or from may, "to celebrate May Day," plus -ing.

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