Other forms: drays
A dray is a low heavy cart for carrying barrels. A brewer's dray, the dray horses, load the dray.
It has no sides, which is what lets barrels be rolled on and off from ground level. Breweries kept dray horses long after lorries arrived, partly for short town deliveries and partly for show. The Old English word behind it meant a dragnet.
1noundrayA low heavy cart for carrying barrels.
“Two huge horses pulled the brewery dray loaded with barrels.”
dray is a cart.
Old English draege means a dragnet, from dragan, to draw or drag. A dray is something dragged.
Proto-Germanic
*dragǭ
Old English
dræġe — dragnet
Middle English
draye
English, today
dray
From Middle English draye, dreye, from Old English dræġe (“dragnet”), from Proto-Germanic dragǭ. Cognate with Middle Low German drāge (“stretcher; dray”), Middle High German trage (“a litter”). Related to Old English dragan (“to pull; draw”). More at draw.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA