<p><strong>Noun:</strong></p><ul><li>a narrow beam of light</li><li>a gleam or slight manifestation: a ray of hope</li><li>a raylike line or stretch of something</li><li>light or radiance</li><li>a line of sight</li><li>Physics, Optics: any of the lines or streams in which light appears to radiate from a luminous body</li><li>the straight line normal to the wave front in the propagation of radiant energy</li><li>a stream of material particles all moving in the same straight line</li><li>Mathematics: one of a system of straight lines emanating from a point; also called half-line</li><li>the part of a straight line considered as originating at a point on the line and as extending in one direction from that point</li><li>any of a system of parts radially arranged</li><li>Zoology: one of the branches or arms of a starfish or other radiate animal</li><li>one of the bony or cartilaginous rods in the fin of a fish</li><li>Botany: ray flower</li><li>one of the branches of an umbel; vascular ray</li><li>(in certain composite plants) the marginal part of the flower head</li><li>Astronomy: one of many long, bright streaks radiating from some of the large lunar craters</li><li>a prominent upright projection from the circlet of a crown or coronet, having a pointed or ornamented termination</li></ul><p><strong>Verb (used without object):</strong></p><ul><li>to emit rays</li><li>to issue in rays</li></ul><p><strong>Verb (used with object):</strong></p><ul><li>to send forth in rays</li><li>to throw rays upon; irradiate</li><li>to subject to the action of rays, as in radiotherapy</li><li>Informal: to make a radiograph of; x-ray</li><li>to furnish with rays or radiating lines</li></ul>