Definition of "splay" [splay]

• Spread or turned out. (adjective)
• Clumsy or clumsily formed; awkward. (adjective)
• Architecture An oblique angle or bevel given to the sides of an opening in a wall so that the opening is wider on one side of the wall than on the other. (noun)
• To spread (the limbs, for example) out or apart, especially clumsily. (verb-transitive)
• To make slanting or sloping; bevel. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "They have relatively stiff steel nibs, which are harder to "splay", and well-designed grips."
• "Magazine, _ classed _nominatim_ by an emphatic earnest man, not without a kind of splay-footed strength and sincerity, -- among the chief Heresiarchs of the -- world?"
• "Eddie Bernard, director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, says one possibility is that the earthquake might not have been confined to the main fault, with additional seabed shaking coming from a 'splay' fault."