at bay

1. 1.

   forced to turn and face attackers

   “a stag at bay”

   “she had me cornered between the porch and her car”

   “like a trapped animal”

   Synonymscorneredtrappedtreed

   Similarunfree

Questions about at bay

What does at bay mean?

at bay means "forced to turn and face attackers".

What is another word for at bay?

Close synonyms include cornered, trapped, treed. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is at bay a common word?

at bay is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.