Etymology: < Old French baie (= Provençal baga) < Latin bāca berry. In Old English begbeam occurs in the Old English Gospels, and in a glossary of the 11th cent. (Wülcker /450) as a rendering of mōrārius; the glossarist adds that mōra is a name for ‘berries’ generally, whence beg appears to be = berry. In the 11th cent. it might perhaps already be adopted < French; but the Corpus Glossary of the 8th cent. (Wülcker /8) has also ‘baccinia (= vaccinia) beger’ which suggests that this (elsewhere begir) might be an archaic plural of an original -is, -os stem, and that beg was a native word. Its Middle English representation would be bey, bay; but the extant bay appears to be from French.

Etymology: < French baie < late Latin baia , in Isidore, c640. (Isidore illustrates his derivation of portus < portare by the analogy of baia < bajulare . He does not consider baia a modern word; but says it made its genitive in -as , like familia . It may thus be an old word in popular Latin.) The meaning of the French word (which the English follows) may have been modified by confusion with baee , bee , on Latin type *badāta an opening (see bay n.³). The two have certainly been associated in English; see especially 2–4, where the senses of recess and projection appear. Derivation < badare , to be open (see bay v.³) is disproved by Italian baja, unless this is borrowed from some other Romanic language, as Spanish or French.

Etymology: < French baie, Old French baée (Latin type badāta ), < bayer , Old French baer , béer to gape, stand open = Provençal badar , Italian badare , as to which see Diez. See bay n.²

Etymology: Two different words seem to be here inextricably confused. Originally, the phrase to hold at bay seems < Old French tenir a bay (Godefroy) = Italian tenere a bada , where bay , bada , means the state of suspense, expectation, or unfulfilled desire, indicated by the open mouth (late Latin badare to open the mouth); but to stand at bay , be brought to bay , correspond to modern French être aux abois , meaning to be at close quarters with the barking dogs, and bay is here aphetically formed < abay n., < Old French abai barking. See bay v.¹ In the phrase at a bay, some early quotations may read at abay.

Etymology: A word of doubtful standing and origin: it may be questioned whether senses 1, 2 are really connected, and whether the word in the Promp. Parv. is not bay n.⁴ Sense 2 does not fall easily under any other of the words spelt bay . For the etymology, the Old Norse bág-r ‘opposition,’ has been compared, with its derived verb bægja ‘to push back, hinder’; the latter might be the direct source of the related bay v.⁴, if we could assume the noun to have been taken from the verb. But if, as seems more likely, the verb is from the noun, the origin of the latter has still to be discovered.

Etymology: < French baie, or its Dutch representation baai , < French bai , baie , the colour bay adj.: see baize n.

Etymology: Of uncertain origin and sense: compare beck n.¹

Etymology: short for bay-antler, earlier be- or bes-antlier, < Old French bes twice, second, secondary + antler n.

Etymology: < French bai bay-coloured < Latin badius, mentioned by Varro in a list of colours appropriate to horses.

Etymology: Partly < Old French baye-r, more frequently occurring in the derivative abayer (see Littré s.v. aboyer; compare Italian bajare , abbajare to bark) of uncertain origin; but influenced in later English use by bay n.⁴, in phrases ‘at bay, to bay,’ so that the two notions were even more inextricably blended than in the noun. (Diez's reference of abayer to Latin *ad-baubāre ‘to bark at’ is now rejected; recently it has been proposed to connect it with badāre, in which case both words would ultimately be from the same source.)

Etymology: A later derivative of the noun in the expression ‘at bay,’ due to the ambiguity with which that was said both of the pursued and of the pursuing animal: see bay n.⁴

Etymology: < Old French baye-r, bée-r to gape, seek with open mouth < late Latin badāre to gape, be open.

Etymology: Immediately connected with bay n.⁵, but whether as its source or derivative does not appear; the latter is more likely. Supposing the verb to be the source, it has been conjecturally derived < Old Norse bægjan ‘to push back, hinder’; it might also be referred to ‘hold at bay’ in some of its uses (see bay n.⁴): or even to bay n.² or bay n.³ in some of their applications.

Etymology: apparently a pseudo-archaism; compare the similar use of embay v.¹ in same work i. vii. 3.

Etymology: < bay n.²