RELAY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Relay

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/rˈilˌeɪ/ Listen

noun

Relay n.

A supply of anything arranged beforehand for affording relief from time to time, or at successive stages; provision for successive relief. Specifically:

(a)

A supply of horses placced at stations to be in readiness to relieve others, so that a trveler may proceed without delay.

(b)

A supply of hunting dogs or horses kept in readiness at certain places to relive the tired dogs or horses, and to continue the pursuit of the game if it comes that way.

(c)

A number of men who relieve others in carrying on some work.

(Elec.) In various forms of telegraphic apparatus, a magnet which receives the circuit current, and is caused by it to bring into into action the power of a local battery for performing the work of making the record; also, a similar device by which the current in one circuit is made to open or close another circuit in which a current is passing.

Relay battery (Elec.), the local battery which is brought into use by the action of the relay magnet, or relay.

verb

Relay v. t. (past & past part. relaid; pres. part. relaying) To lay again; to lay a second time; as, to relay a pavement.

adjective

Relay adj. (Mach.) Relating to, or having the characteristics of, an auxiliary apparatus put into action by a feeble force but itself capable of exerting greater force, used to control a comparatively powerful machine or appliance.

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Etymology of 'Relay'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Relay" Quotes from Famous Books

... territory of evening. And ever as it made a motion onwards, it found the nation more civilized, (else the change would not have been effected,) and raised them to a still higher civilization. The next relay on that line of road, the next repeating frigate, is Cowper in his poem on Conversation. He speaks of four o'clock as still the elegant hour for dinner—the hour for the lautiores and the lepidi homines. Now this was written about 1780, or a little ...

— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... communication, nations have entered upon a new era. Commerce and industry have come to dominate thought and action and are transforming the very life of the world. Defying the rigorous climate of both the poles, trade has penetrated the frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and made of the Falkland Islands a relay station in the progress of victorious industry. Nor is the equatorial heat more discouraging. The thick jungles of Africa have yielded their secrets, and the muddy waters of the Amazon are churned by propellers a thousand miles from the sea. International trade routes traverse the seas, ...

— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... Jarvis, "this city was one of the relay stations to boost the flow. Their power plant was the only one of the giant buildings that seemed to serve any useful purpose, and that was worth seeing. I wish you'd seen it, Karl; you'll have to make what you can from our ...

— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... for Valois in the Commandante's scowl when the saddest May day of his life comes. A rider on relay horses hands him a ...

— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... forty, whose round head, shaggy eyebrows, small, keen eyes, broad chest, and heavy muscles showed a preponderance of the animal and brutal over the intellectual and spiritual. This was Mr. Scroggs, the agent of a rice-plantation, who had come on, bringing an order for a new relay of negroes to supply the deficit occasioned by fever, dysentery, and other causes, in ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

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