ˈhaymaking, vbl. n.
[f. as haymaker.]
a. The process of cutting and drying grass for hay. Also fig. and transf. The action of ‘making hay’ (see hay n.1 3).
| 1588 Marprel. Epist. (Arb.) 45 Tooke his seruants and went a heymaking. 1589 Cogan Haven Health (1636) 290 How that at York the Monkes of Saint Mary Abbey and the Nunnes of Clement Thorpe met together at heymaking. 1749 Berkeley Word to Wise Wks. III. 447 The lightest labour, that of hay-making. 1840 Dickens Barn. Rudge iv, Where there was merry hay-making in the summer time. 1882 Daily News (Ware), A number of men go into a friend's room, find him absent, and testify to their chagrin by disturbing the arrangements of his furniture. But hay-making of this sort is comparatively harmless and inoffensive. 1924 W. R. Inge Lay Thoughts (1926) 193 The hay-making of the profiteer after the war. 1971 Weekend World (Johannesburg) 9 May 1/2 The unrated Mexican shattered the..boxing champion's hopes of a crack at the world title with a hay-making left hook in the ninth of their..10 round fight. |
b. attrib. and Comb., as haymaking season, haymaking time, etc.; haymaking furnace, an apparatus in which the heat of a coke furnace is driven by a fan through new-mown hay in order to dry it; haymaking machine, an apparatus for drying grass for hay.
| 1752 Thyer Note on Milton's L'Allegro 92 The haymaking scene in the lower lands. 1822 Shelley Chas. I, ii. 39 To catch Woodcocks in haymaking time. 1826 Loudon Encycl. Agric. (1844) 420 Horse Rakes and Haymaking Machines. 1881 C. M. Yonge Lads & Lasses Langley ii. 60 There was hay-making-machine-work going on at the farm. |