出典:Wiktionary
出典:『Wiktionary』 (2025/05/20 09:15 UTC 版)
From 中期英語 cleyy, cleyye (“clayish; messy; unclean”) [and other forms], either:
The English word is equivalent to clay + -ey (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘having the quality of’), with the -e- included to avoid the occurrence of -yy.
Sense 4 (“of the human body, as contrasted with the soul”) may allude to the biblical account of God creating man from earth; see Genesis 2:7 (King James Version; spelling modernized): “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
clayey (comparative clayier, superlative clayiest)