spray
Pluralsprays
Pluralsprays
Formssprays, spraying, sprayed
- 1A fine, gentle mist of liquid scattered through the air, such as the droplets thrown up by breaking waves.
Spray from the breaking waves drifted across the deck and stung their eyes.
The fountain's jets dissolved into a drifting spray that cooled the whole plaza.
Similarmist
Note
The mist meaning came into English from Middle Dutch sprāien, "to spray, sprinkle, spread," and goes back to a root meaning "to sow, scatter," which is still the picture: drops flung out like seed. Uncountable, it is the drifting stuff (spray from the waves); countable, it is one burst (a spray of water). The flowering branch is an unrelated word that only shares the spelling.
- 2To send a liquid at someone or something as a scattered stream or mist of drops.
Firefighters sprayed the roof for an hour to keep the flames from spreading.
Crews spray the orchard with pesticide each spring before the trees bloom.
Similarhose, douse, sprinkle, spritz, squirt
Note
Here the object is the target, not the liquid: firefighters spray the house, and crews spray an orchard. The liquid, if it is named at all, follows with: spray the roses with soapy water. Turn the sentence around and the liquid becomes the object (spray water on the roses), which is spraying the liquid itself.
- 3Any of the many commercial products, such as paints, cosmetics, and insecticides, that are sold in containers and released as a fine mist.
The garden center sells an organic spray that keeps aphids off roses.
Cosmetic companies now market sprays that set makeup for a full day.
- 4To scatter something outward as fine drops or particles, or to shoot out in a scattered stream of drops.
Mechanics spray oil into the lock to free the stuck pin.
Water sprayed out of the cracked pipe and across the basement floor.
Note
The verb works in two directions without changing form: someone sprays ointment on a scratch, or water sprays out of a hose with no one named at all. In the second use a direction usually comes along, out of, across or over, because what matters is where the drops go.
- 5
- 6To send many small things flying out in all directions, as though they were drops of liquid.
Distribution hubs spray millions of parcels out across the country every night.
He sprayed opinions across social media without ever checking a fact.
Note
Aimlessness carries over into the figure: what is sprayed goes out everywhere at once, to whoever is in range. Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian in 2013, has people spraying their innermost secrets "into the public ether." Said of words, opinions or secrets, it usually implies too little care about who receives them.
- 7Anything that looks like a fine mist of scattered drops, such as a sprinkling of freckles.
Freckles ran across her cheekbones in a faint spray.
The truck's tires sent up a spray of gravel as it pulled off the shoulder.
Similarshower, sprinkling, scatter
Note
In this use the word takes of and a plural noun: a spray of gravel from a tire, a spray of freckles across a nose. It can be plural itself, as when Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) gives Nurse Cramer "fetching sprays of adorable freckles," and what it adds to a plain sprinkling is the sense of things flung outward.
- 8A small branch or stem with flowers or berries growing along it, whether on the plant or cut for a bouquet.
Florists tuck a spray of baby's breath between the roses to fill out the bouquet.
Sprays of hawthorn blossom bent over the lane in the May wind.
Similarsprig
Note
The branch of blossom goes back to Old English, where the word survives in place names such as Spreyton, though nothing earlier is known of it. Poets found it useful: Milton's nightingale sings "on yon bloomy spray," and Dryden's birds hop "from Spray to Spray." It is still at home in weddings and bouquets, and sprig is its nearest everyday equivalent.
- 9Of an animal, to release urine on a surface in order to mark its territory.
Unneutered tomcats spray to mark the edges of their territory.
The leopard sprayed against a tree trunk, leaving a scent that other leopards would recognize.
Similarmark
Note
Zoologists class it as scent marking, not ordinary urination: the animal backs up to an upright surface such as a tree and directs a small amount of urine onto it, leaving a chemical message for others of its kind. The verb takes no object: a tomcat sprays, or sprays on the curtains.
- 10In medicine, a jet of fine medicated vapor, applied to an affected part of the body or used to fill a room's air with a disinfectant or deodorizer.
The nurse directed a fine spray of antiseptic over the wound before dressing it.
In the ward a spray of disinfectant was released into the air twice a day to keep infection down.
Note
A medicine given as a spray acts where it lands, on a wound or a patch of skin, instead of being swallowed. Word order divides the work: a spray of antiseptic is the jet itself, the dose applied at one moment, while an antiseptic spray is more often the preparation, closer to the product in its can.
- 11The small branches and twigs of a tree or shrub taken together, with their leaves.
Pea sticks should be cut with plenty of spray on them so the tendrils have something to grip.
After the storm the lawn was littered with spray torn from the oaks.
Note
As a mass noun the word works like brushwood: John Claudius Loudon wanted pea sticks "well furnished with spray." The use is old, too; before 1300 Robert of Gloucester tells of a great fire made "of wode & of sprai." When sprays are counted, the word usually means a single branch of blossom.
- 12An ornament or decorative design in the shape of a branch.
The brooch was a diamond spray, each stone set as a bud along a curving stem.
A carved spray of oak leaves runs across the top of the mantelpiece.
- 13A loud, angry scolding, typically one delivered by a sports coach or a similar figure in charge.
After the loss the coach gave the players a real spray in the sheds.
The captain copped a spray from the umpire for arguing the decision.
Similarearful, roasting, serve, rocket, dressing-down
Note
Australian sport is this meaning's home ground: a coach gives the players a spray, and a player cops one. Those who believe in it speak of a good spray or a big spray with relish, though Kevin Hillier's Rocket Science (2008) doubts that a big spray still works the way it used to. Elsewhere, dressing-down is the word readers will know.
- 14In soccer, to pass the ball, usually sideways across the field and often over a long distance.
Their playmaker can spray the ball to either wing with one touch and without looking up.
The center back sprayed long diagonal balls to the flanks all afternoon.
Similarping
Note
A sprayed pass is a compliment: it goes long and wide, often switching play from a crowded flank to the open one, and it arrives. The object is the ball or simply it, as in Jamal Orme's The Victory Boys (2013): Yunus sprayed it to the wing. In Australian rules the wayward kick turns the praise into blame.
- 15To shower money on guests as they dance at a party or other function.
By midnight the celebrant's friends were spraying him with crisp naira notes on the dance floor.
Wealthy guests like to spray the host and the musicians to show their generosity.
Similarshower
Note
The dancer, not the money, is the object: guests spray the celebrant, or spray the host with crisp notes. The custom is Nigerian, and a small trade has grown up around it, with vendors selling fresh banknotes to partygoers. In 2025 Aanu Adeoye reported in FT Weekend that Nigeria was cracking down on the practice, and guests have been warned they may be arrested at the party.
- 16In Australian rules football, to kick the ball badly so that it goes somewhere other than where it was meant to.
The forwards sprayed the ball all afternoon, kicking behind after behind and only two goals.
Under pressure from the tagger, he would spray the ball instead of hitting a target.
Note
In Australian rules the verb is a complaint about accuracy, used as readily for a whole side's wayward kicking as for one player's miss. Nick Richardson's The Game of Their Lives (2016) has forwards spraying the ball in front of goal for a solitary goal and six careless behinds. Spraying and squandering travel together in writing about the game.
- 17In climbing slang, to give someone advice they did not want.
He sprayed beta at every climber who got on the route, whether they wanted it or not.
Regulars at the gym learn not to spray when someone is working a problem.
Note
The word belongs to climbers, and it comes with a sneer: the person who sprays is the one at the crag or the gym explaining a route to someone who never asked. It can stand alone (don't spray) or take beta, the climbers' word for route advice, as its object. Outside climbing it will not be understood in this sense.
- 18In metal casting, a side channel branching off the runner of a mold flask, cut so that the molten metal reaches every part of the mold.
The molder cut a spray to each corner of the mold so the metal would fill evenly.
Molten iron ran along the runner and divided among the sprays feeding the cavity.
Note
Several sprays can branch from one runner, each feeding its own region of the cavity, so that a large or awkwardly shaped casting fills evenly instead of from a single entry point. The molder cuts them before the pour; once the metal sets, what fills them becomes the connecting web of a cluster of castings.
- 19In metal casting, a set of pieces cast together in one mold and still joined by the metal that hardened in the runner and its branches.
Each spray held a dozen small brass fittings that were cut apart after cooling.
The foundry shipped the parts still attached to their sprays to save handling.
Note
Sprue and spray are easy to confuse: the sprues are the rods of metal left in the channels, and the spray is the whole cluster they hold together, castings and all. Once the pieces are cut free, the sprues are trimmed off and can go back into the furnace.
- 20To fill a heap or other memory area with many identical blocks of bytes so an exploit can rely on that data sitting at a known address.
- 21In computer security, the technique of filling many blocks of memory with identical bytes so the data lands at a predictable address an exploit can use.
- 22A piece of land planted with fruit trees.
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Origins
From Middle Dutch sprāien, sprayen, spraeyen (“to spray, sprinkle, spread”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sprēwijaną (“to spray, sprinkle”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)per- (“to sow, scatter”). It is cognate with Middle High German spræjen, spræwen (“to squirt, spray, dust, splash, straw”), Dutch sproeien (“to spray, sprinkle”), German sprühen (“to spray, sparkle”), and dialect words in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
From Middle English spray, from Old English *spræġ, sprei (found in place names such as Spreyton, England), of unknown origin.