ASSAY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Assay

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noun

Assay n.

1.

Trial; attempt; essay. (Obs.) "I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay than it now seems at distance."

2.

Examination and determination; test; as, an assay of bread or wine. (Obs.) "This can not be, by no assay of reason."

3.

Trial by danger or by affliction; adventure; risk; hardship; state of being tried. (Obs.) "Through many hard assays which did betide."

4.

Tested purity or value. (Obs.) "With gold and pearl of rich assay."

5.

(Metallurgy) The act or process of ascertaining the proportion of a particular metal in an ore or alloy; especially, the determination of the proportion of gold or silver in bullion or coin.

6.

The alloy or metal to be assayed. Assay and essay are radically the same word; but modern usage has appropriated assay chiefly to experiments in metallurgy, and essay to intellectual and bodily efforts. See Essay. Note: Assay is used adjectively or as the first part of a compound; as, assay balance, assay furnace.

Assay master, an officer who assays or tests gold or silver coin or bullion.

Assay ton, a weight of 29,166 2/3 grams.

verb

Assay v. t. (past & past part. assayed; pres. part. assaying)

1.

To try; to attempt; to apply. (Obs. or Archaic) "To-night let us assay our plot." "Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed."

2.

To affect. (Obs.) "When the heart is ill assayed."

3.

To try tasting, as food or drink. (Obs.)

4.

To subject, as an ore, alloy, or other metallic compound, to chemical or metallurgical examination, in order to determine the amount of a particular metal contained in it, or to ascertain its composition.

Assay v. i. To attempt, try, or endeavor. (Archaic. In this sense essay is now commonly used.) "She thrice assayed to speak."

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Etymology of 'Assay'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Assay" Quotes from Famous Books

... us that we had a sufficient quantity of the lode matter for a trial assay, and we spent the better part of the afternoon picking out pieces of the ore on the small dump and in chipping more of them from the exposed face of the seam. It was arranged that one of us should take the samples to town after dark, for the sake of secrecy, and we put in ...

— Branded • Francis Lynde

... doubtless often hard put to it for a living, but the variety of his attainments served him in good stead. He possessed or gained some reputation as a mining expert, and making his way down into Cornwall, he seems for some years subsequent to 1782 to have been assay-master and storekeeper of some mines at Dolcoath. While still at Dolcoath, it is very probable that he put together the little pamphlet which appeared in London at the close of 1785, with the title "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of ...

— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... treasure, as Sir John Davies asserted, to conquer two Ulster clans three hundred years ago. The naked valor of the Irishman excelled the armed might of Tudor England; and the struggle that gave the empire of the seas to Britain was won not in the essay of battle, but in the assay of the mint. ...

— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... me to attempt the Method here; with this View, the Hopes of restoring to the Publick their greatest Poet in his Original Purity: after having so long lain in a Condition that was a Disgrace to common Sense. To this End I have ventur'd on a Labour, that is the first Assay of the kind on any modern Author whatsoever. For the late Edition of Milton by the Learned *Dr. Bentley is, in the main, a Performance of another Species. It is plain, it was the Intention of that Great Man rather to Correct and pare off the Excrescencies ...

— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald

... Government assay office in Frankfort during the last year have developed the fact that gold, platinum, palladium, and selenium are found in old silver coins and also in ores which were formerly supposed to be nearly pure sulphides and oxides of lead and silver. From 400,000 pounds of silver ...

— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

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