ray

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A narrow stream of radiant energy, especially visible light, traveling in a straight or nearly straight line.
• noun A narrow stream of particles such as protons traveling in a straight or nearly straight line.
• noun A rapidly moving particle traveling in a straight or nearly straight line.
• noun Sunshine.
• noun A small amount; a trace.
• noun Mathematics A straight line extending from a point.
• noun A structure or part having the form of a straight line extending from a point, such as.
• noun Any of the bright streaks that are seen radiating from some craters on the moon.
• noun A ray flower or the strap-shaped portion of the corolla of a ray flower.
• noun A branch of an umbel.
• noun One of the bony spines supporting the membrane of a fish's fin.
• noun One of the arms of a starfish or other radiate animal.
• transitive verb To send out as rays; emit.
• transitive verb To supply with rays or radiating lines.
• transitive verb To cast rays on; irradiate.
• noun Any of various cartilaginous fishes of the superorder Batoidea, having ventral gill slits, enlarged pelvic fins that are fused to the sides of the head, and a flattened body, and including the stingrays, skates, and guitarfishes.
• noun Any of various members of this superorder having a whiplike tail usually with a stinging spine, such as a stingray, considered in contrast to a guitarfish, sawfish, or skate.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To mark with long lines; form rays of or in.
• To shoot forth or emit; cause to shine out.
• To stripe.
• To shine forth or out as in rays.
• noun One of the elasmobranchiate fishes constituting the genus Raia, recognized by the flattened body, which becomes a broad disk from its union with the extremely broad and fleshy pectorals, which are joined to each other before or at the snout, and extend behind the two sides of the abdomen as far as the base of the ventrals, resembling the rays of a fan.
• noun Any member of the order Hypotremi, Batoidei, or Raiæ, such as the sting-ray, eagle-ray, skate, torpedo, etc. See cuts under Elasmobranchii, skate, sting-ray, and torpedo.
• noun Array; order; arrangement; rank; dress.
• noun A kind of dance.
• To array.
• To beray with dirt or filth; daub; defile.
• noun A kind of striped cloth.
• noun A certain disease of sheep, also called scab, shab, or rubbers.
• noun Same as roy.
• noun Light emitted in a given direction from a luminous body; a line of light, or, more generally, of radiant energy; technically, the straight line perpendicular to the wave-front in the propagation of a light- or heat-wave.
• noun A beam of intellectual light.
• noun A stripe; streak; line.
• noun In geometry, an unlimited straight line.
• noun In botany:
• noun One of the branches or pedicels in an umbel.
• noun The marginal part as opposed to the central part or disk in a head, umbel, or other flower-cluster, when there is a difference of structure, as in many Compositæ and in wild hydrangeas.
• noun A ray-flower.
• noun A radius. See medullary rays, under medullary.
• noun One of the ray-like processes or arms of the Radiata, as of a starfish; a radiated or radiating part or organ; an actinomere. See cuts under Asterias and Asteriidæ.
• noun One of the hard spinous or soft jointed processes which support and serve to extend the fin of a fish; a part of the skeleton of the fin; specifically, one which is articulated, thus contradistinguished from a hard or inarticulated one called specifically a spine; a fin-ray.
• noun In entomology, one of the longitudinal nervures or veins of an insect's wing.
• noun plural In heraldry:
• noun Long indentations or dents by which a heraldic line is broken, whether dividing two parts of the escutcheon or bounding any ordinary. Compare radiant, 3 .
• noun A representation of rays, whether issuing from the sun or from a corner of the escutcheon, a cloud, or an ordinary.
• noun Bundles of straight or collecting tubules of the kidney contained in the cortex; the pyramids of Ferrein. See tubule.
• noun In geometry: The aggregate of all points of the straight a situated on one and the same side of a point O of adjective
• noun One of the two parts of a straightest (great circle) determined by a point of it O with its opposite O′ .
• noun See obscure rays, radiation, and radioactivity.