water or other liquid broken up into minute droplets and blown, ejected into, or falling through the air.
2.
a jet of fine particles of liquid, as medicine, insecticide, paint, perfume, etc., discharged from an atomizer or other device for direct application to a surface.
3.
a liquid to be discharged or applied in such a jet.
4.
an apparatus or device for discharging such a liquid.
5.
a quantity of small objects, flying or discharged through the air: a spray of shattered glass.
"sprinkle liquid in drops," 1527, from M.Du. sprayen, from P.Gmc. *spræwjanan (cf. Ger. sprühen "to sparkle, drizzle," Spreu "chaff," lit. "that which flies about"), from PIE base *sper- "to sow, scatter" (see sprout). The noun is attested from 1621. Spray-painting
is from 1902; spray-paint (v.) is from 1928.
spray
"small branch," c.1300, possibly related to O.E. spræc "shoot, twig" (see sprig).
networking A Unix command that sends packets to a host and reports performance statistics. The number of packets, delay between packets and packet length can all be specified. The spray command uses the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol to send a one-way stream of packets to the sprayd daemon on the given host. With the "-i" option, spray uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) instead of RPC. Normally these will be echoed automatically, creating a return stream. Unix manual page: spray(1M). (2007-03-12)