| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| splay |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  spl |
| ADJECTIVE: | 1. Spread or turned out. 2. Clumsy or clumsily formed; awkward. | | NOUN: | Architecture An oblique angle or bevel given to the sides of an opening in a wall so that the opening is wider on one side of the wall than on the other. | | VERB: | Inflected forms: splayed, splay·ing, splays
| | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To spread (the limbs, for example) out or apart, especially clumsily. 2. To make slanting or sloping; bevel. 3. To dislocate (a bone). Used of an animal. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To be spread out or apart. 2. To slant or slope. | | ETYMOLOGY: | From Middle English splayen, to spread out, short for displayen. See display.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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