Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A shallow flat receptacle with a raised edge or rim, used for carrying, holding, or displaying articles.
  • noun A shallow flat receptacle with its contents.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Trouble; annoyance; anger.
  • To grieve; annoy.
  • noun Deceit; stratagem.
  • noun Same as trey.
  • noun The third branch, snag, or point of a deer's antler.
  • To betray.
  • noun A trough, open box, or similar vessel used for different domestic and industrial purposes. Specifically
  • noun A flat shallow vessel or utensil with slightly raised edges, employed for holding bread, dishes, glassware, silver, cards, etc., and for other household uses.
  • noun A wide shallow coverless box of wood or cardboard, used in museums for packing and displaying specimens of natural history.
  • noun A shallow and usually rectangular dish or pan of crockery ware, gutta-percha, papier-mâché, metal, or other material, used in museums for holding wet (alcoholic) specimens when these are overhauled for study, etc. Similar trays are used for ova in fish-culture, for many chemical operations, in photography, etc.
  • noun A hod.
  • noun A hurdle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To betray; to deceive.
  • noun A small trough or wooden vessel, sometimes scooped out of a block of wood, for various domestic uses, as in making bread, chopping meat, etc.
  • noun A flat, broad vessel on which dishes, glasses, etc., are carried; a waiter; a salver.
  • noun A shallow box, generally without a top, often used within a chest, trunk, box, etc., as a removable receptacle for small or light articles.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete Trouble; annoyance; anger.
  • verb transitive, obsolete To grieve; annoy.
  • verb transitive, obsolete To betray.
  • noun A small, typically rectangular or round, flat, rigid object upon which things are carried.
  • noun A flat carrier for items being transported.
  • noun The items on a full tray.
  • noun A component of a device into which an item is placed for use in the device's operations.
  • noun computing, graphical user interface, informal A notification area used for icons and alerts.
  • verb transitive To place items on a tray.
  • verb intransitive To slide down a snow-covered hill on a tray from a cafeteria.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an open receptacle for holding or displaying or serving articles or food

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English trēg; see deru- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English traye, treie, from Old English trega ("misfortune, misery, trouble, grief, pain"), from Proto-Germanic *tregô, *mourning, from Proto-Indo-European *dregʰ- (“unwilling, sullen, slack”). Cognate with Icelandic tregi ("sorrow, grief"), Gothic  (trigo, "grief").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English trayen, treien, from Old English tregian ("to trouble, harass, vex"), from Proto-Germanic *tregōnan (“to become tedious, become lazy, sadden”), from Proto-Indo-European *dregʰ- (“unwilling, sullen, slack”).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English trayen, from Old French trair ("to betray"), from Latin tradō ("hand over, betray"). More at betray.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English treye, from Old English trēġ, trīġ, from Proto-Germanic *traujan (“wooden vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *drAuk-, *drAuḱ- (“a kind of vessel”), from *dóru (“tree”). Cognate with Old Norse treyja ("carrier"), Old Swedish trø ("wooden grain measure"), Low German Treechel ("dough trough"), Ancient Greek  (drouítē, "tub, vat"), Sanskrit  (droṇa, "trough"). More at tree.

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