Other forms: splayed, splays, splaying
To splay is to spread wide apart. Splay your fingers, splayed legs, splay outwards.
It usually suggests the spreading is awkward or ungainly, which is why splayed is more often a criticism than a description. In building, a splay is a surface cut at a slant, as in a window reveal. The word is a shortening of display.
1verbsplayTo spread wide apart.
“The puppy slipped on the ice, its legs splayed in every direction.”
splay is a spreading.
A shortening of display, from Old French desploier, to unfold — the same word as deploy.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleḱ-
Middle English
splaien
English, today
splay
Built from
The verb is derived from Middle English splaien, splayen (“to display; to spread out, unfurl (a flag, etc.); (cooking) to cut open (a fish) lengthwise and lay it open; (figurative) to appear; to spread”), an aphetic form of Middle English displaien, displayen (“to display”): see display. The adjective and adverb are derived from the verb, or from splayfoot or splayfooted. The noun is derived from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA