Also 5–6 baye, 6–7 baie. [a. F. bai bay-colored:—L. badius, mentioned by Varro in a list of colors appropriate to horses.]
1. A reddish-brown color; a. generally used of horses, and taken to include various shades. Hence qualified as bright-bay, light-bay, blood-bay, golden-bay.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Troylus, I. 1072. His stede bay.
1420. E. E. Wills (1882), 53. A bay hors þat was Gerards my son.
1460. Lybeaus Disc., 462. An stedes baye brown.
1551. T. Wilson, Logike, 79. All horses bee not of one colour, but … some baye, some daple.
1622. Peacham, Compl. Gentl., I. xxiv. (1634), 85. A Bay or a Chesnut Colour, of all others it is most to be commended in Horses.
1671. Lond. Gaz., No. 636/4. Stoln … a Bay Ball Nag.
1715. Addison, Drummer, V. i. concl. I have a horse … a bay gelding.
1823. Lockhart, Vow of Reduan, xi. in Sp. Ball. He spurred his bright bay mare.
1860. J. Brown, Horæ Subs., My Father’s Mem. His little blood bay horse.
b. rarely used otherwise.
1653. Urquhart, Rabelais, I. xii. (1694), I. 45. He made him also change his colour of Hair … from Bay, Brown, to Sorrel … gingioline.
1839. Lady Lytton, Cheveley, II. v. 143. Mrs. Tymmons had been a blonde, and consequently had subsided into a bay wig.
2. as sb., ellipt. for ‘bay horse.’
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot., II. 187. Occa … Vpoun ane bay out of the feild him bair.
a. 1600[?]. Came you not fr. N., in Furniv., Percy Folio, I. 253. Met yee not my true loue ryding on a bony bay.
1774. J. Bryant, Mythol., I. 327. The horse was of a Palm colour, which is a bright red. We call such horses bays.
1781. Cowper, Retirem., 392. Lolls at his ease behind four handsome bays.
1884. Times, 27 Feb., 7/6. The compact, black-legged bays of Essex.
3. Comb., as bay-brown, bay-colo(u)red.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Vayo, baye coloured.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Countr. Farm, 675. The baie coloured ones haue the second place for goodnesse.
1852. T. Harris, Insects New Eng., 85. [An insect] of a light bay-brown color, with the head and antennæ darker.
