Other forms: praying, prayed, prays
To pray is to speak to a god, often with hands together. Pray for them, pray silently, pray for rain.
It covers asking, thanking and simply addressing, and every religion has its own forms and postures. Pray for somebody is the standard construction. As a formal adverb, pray once meant please — pray be seated — and survives only in old writing and in pray tell, which is now used ironically. Note prayer, which is both the act and the words.
1verbprayTo speak to a god.
“The family prays together before every meal.”
2adverbpleasePlease, in old or ironic use.
“Pray tell, which is used ironically roughly always.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pray is an act of devotion.
Old French preier comes from Latin precari, to beg. Precarious, deprecate and imprecation come from the same begging, and pray displaced the Old English gebiddan.
Middle English
preien
English, today
pray
From Middle English preien. Displaced native Old English gebiddan. Cognate via Indo-European of Old English frignan, fricgan, German fragen, Dutch vragen. Compare deprecate, imprecate, precarious.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA