Other forms: relays, relayed, relaying, relaid
A relay is the team race in which each runner covers part of the distance and passes a baton to the next. The four by one hundred relay, run the relay, the relay team.
The changeover is where relays are won and lost: the baton must be passed inside a marked zone, and dropping it ends the race. Swimming relays pass a touch instead of a baton. Elsewhere, to relay something is to pass a message on: relay the news. And an electrical relay is a switch operated by another circuit, which is how a small current controls a large one.
1nounrelayA team race in which a baton passes from runner to runner.
“They lost the relay at the second changeover.”
2verbpassTo pass a message or signal on.
“She relayed the whole conversation almost word for word.”
relay is a passing on.
Old French relais meant fresh hounds or horses posted along a route to take over from tired ones. The idea of handing on at a station is the whole word, and it reached athletics, telegraphy and electronics from the hunt.
Old French
relaier — to leave behind
Middle French
relai — reserve pack of hounds
English, today
relay
Built from
From Middle French relai (“reserve pack of hounds”), from relaier (“to exchange tired animals for fresh”); literally, "to leave behind", from Old French relaier (“to leave behind”), from re- + laier (“to leave”), of uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA