assay - What does it mean?
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Definition of 'assay'English
Noun
( wikipedia)
( en-noun)
Trial, attempt, essay.
* Milton
- I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay than it now seems at distance.
Examination and determination; test.
* Shakespeare
- This cannot be, by no assay of reason.
The qualitative or quantitative chemical analysis of something.
Trial by danger or by affliction; adventure; risk; hardship; state of being tried.
* Spenser
- Through many hard assays which did betide.
Tested purity or value.
* Spenser
- With gold and pearl of rich assay .
The act or process of ascertaining the proportion of a particular metal in an ore or alloy; especially, the determination of the proportion of gold or silver in bullion or coin.
The alloy or metal to be assayed.
- (Ure)
Verb
To attempt (something).
*Shakespeare
*:To-night let us assay our plot.
*Milton
*:Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed .
*1936 , (Alfred Edward Housman), More Poems , IV , The Sage to the Young Man , ll.5-8:
*:Who seest the stark array / And hast not stayed to count / But singly wilt assay / The many-cannoned mount.
*2011 , ‘All-pro, anti-American’, The Economist , 28 May:
*:Speaking before a small crowd beneath antique airplanes suspended in the atrium of the State of Iowa Historical Museum, an effortfully cheerful Mr Romney assayed an early version of a stump speech I imagine will become a staple of his campaign for the Republican nomination, once it "officially" begins some time next week in New Hampshire.
(archaic) To try, attempt ((to) do something).
*1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Acts IX:
- When Saul cam to Jerusalem he assayde to cople hymsilfe with the apostles, and they wer all afrayde of hym and beleved not that he was a disciple.
To analyze or estimate the composition or value of (a metal, ore etc.).
(obsolete) To test the abilities of (someone) in combat; to fight.
*:
*:I wold not by my wille that ony of vs were matched with hym / Nay said sir Gawayne not so / it were shame to vs were he not assayed were he neuer soo good a knyghte
*1977 , (Geoffrey Chaucer), (The Canterbury Tales) , Penguin Classics, p.351:
*:The marquis, in obsession for his wife, / Longed to expose her constancy to test. / He could not throw the thought away or rest, / Having a marvellous passion to assay' her; / Needless, God knows, to frighten and dismay her, / He had ' assayed her faith enough before / And ever found her good; what was the need / Of heaping trial on her, more and more?
To affect.
*Spenser
*:when the heart is ill assayed
To try tasting, as food or drink.
Derived terms
* assay office
* assay mark
* bioassay
* immunoassay
* radioimmunoassay
Anagrams
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