bay (1), baye

[In Fr. baie; Prov., Sp., & Port. bahia; Ital. baia, baja; Low Lat. baia; Ir. & Gael. badh, bagh; Bisc. baid, baiya = harbour. Wedgwood considers Sp., ., bahia the original form, and derives it from Catalan badia = a bay, and badar = to open, to gape. ( Skeat.)] A. As substantive: 1. Geog. & Ord. Lang. An arm or inlet of the sea extending into the land with a wider mouth proportionally than a gulf. Compare in this respect the Bay of Biscay with the Gulf of Venice. "And as the ocean many days will make." Byron: Childe Harold, iv. 157. 2. Hydraulics & Ord. Lang.: A pond-head raised to keep a store of water for driving a mill. 3. Arch. & Ord. Lang.: A term used to signify the magnitude of a building. Thus, "if a barn consists of a floor and two heads, where they lay corn, they call it a barn of two bays. These bays are from fourteen to twenty feet long, and floors from ten to twelve broad, and usually twenty feet long, which is the breadth of the barn." ( Builder's Dict., Johnson, .) "If this law hold in Vienna ten years, I'll rent the fairest house in it after threepence a bay ."-Shakesp.: Meas. for Meas . , ii. 1. "There may be kept one you sand bushels in each bay, there being sixteen bays, each eighteen feet long, about seventeen wide, or three hundred square feet in each bay."-Mortimer: Art of Husbandry. B. Attributively: As in the following compounds: