Forms: 6 baie, 6–7 baye, 4– bay. [a. F. baie, OF. baée (L. type badāta), f. bayer, OF. baer, béer to gape, stand open = Pr. and It. badare, as to which see Diez. See prec.]
1. An opening in a wall; esp. the space between two columns.
c. 1325. E. E. Allit. P., B. 1392. Heȝe houses withinne þe halle to hit med, So brod bilde in a bay, þat blonkes moȝt renne.
c. 1400. Sowdone Bab., 940. O Thow rede Marz … That in the trende baye hase made thy trone.
1849. Freeman, Archit., 371. The division into bays by a marked vertical line seems everywhere rigidly preserved.
1870. F. Wilson, Ch. Lindisf., 102. The last two bays of the nave … are unoccupied.
1884. Manch. Weekly Times, 11 Oct., 5/6. The replacing of the tracery of the cloisters … proceeding bay by bay.
2. ‘The division of a barn or other building, generally from fifteen to twenty feet in breadth,’ Gwilt. (See the dialect Glossaries.) Applied to a house, it appears to be the space lying under one gable, or included between two party-walls.
1557. Richmond. Wills (1853), 101. Ij bayes of rye, bye est. xxx qu. xv b.
1577. Holinshed, Chron., III. 1198/2. Two and fortie baies of houses.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., II. i. 255. Ile rent the fairest house in it after three pence a Bay.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Countr. Farm, 18. One of the sides of your Barne, all along for the space of three Bayes, shall serue to put your Rie and Wheat in.
1725. Bradley, Fam. Dict., Bay, a rural Word used to signify the Bigness of a Barn; for if a Barn consists of a Floor and two Heads, wherein they lay Corn, they say a barn of two Bays.
1759. Ann. Reg., 127/2. Ten bay of Buildings.
3. Applications of the idea of ‘recess’: e.g., horse-bay, the stall for a horse; sick-bay, part of the fore-part of a ship’s main-deck, used as a hospital.
1582. Wills & Inv. N. C. (1860), II. 47. Iij swalles for a horse baye 8d.
1851. Art. Jrnl. Hist. Gt. Exhib., 20/1. The crowding of the bays of the galleries.
1863. Cornh. Mag., Feb. Life Man-of-War, 181. Their ‘sick bay’ probably does not differ from any hospital ward.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Bay, the fore part of a ship between decks before the bitts.
1885. Pall Mall Gaz., 31 March, 6/1. The ‘bays’ between the gun stations … afford shelter to the gunners.
4. Applications of ‘intervening space,’ usually receding, as bay in plastering, of joists, of roofing.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 384. Bay, a strip or rib of plaster between screeds, for regulating the floating rule.
1842. Gwilt, Archit. (1875), 1193. Bay of joists, the joisting between two binding joists, or between two girders, when binding joists are not used. Bay of roofing, the small rafters and their supporting purlins between two principal rafters.
5. An internal recess formed by causing a wall to project outwardly beyond the general line, for the reception of a window or other feature.
1428–1741. [see BAY-WINDOW].
1805. Repton, Landsc. Gard., 178. Large recesses or bays, sometimes called bowre windows, and now bow windows.
1855. Merivale, Rom. Emp. (1865), VI. xlviii. 60. Projecting the bay of the tribune from the flat wall of the basilica.
1877. E. Walford, Our Gt. Fam., I. 76. A substantial brick house, the front diversified by two bays.
