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Usage experts warn against confusing the verbs assay and essay. Some confusion shouldn’t be surprising; not only do the two somewhat uncommon words look and sound alike, they also come from the same root, the Middle French word essai, meaning "test" or "effort." (Essai, in turn, comes from the Late Latin word exagium, meaning "act of weighing.") At one time, the two terms were synonyms, sharing the meaning "try" or "attempt," but they are now typically differentiated, with essay meaning "to try or attempt" (as in "a comedic actor essaying her first dramatic role") and assay meaning "to test or evaluate" (as in "blood assayed to detect the presence of the antibody"). Of course, essay is more common as a noun referring to a short analytic or personal literary composition, but that’s another essay.
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Examples of assay in a Sentence
Tim Treadgold, Forbes, 21 Oct. 2024
The 950-pound rover could navigate treacherous lunar terrain to reach a site of interest, assay the soil’s ice content with three-foot-deep drilling and then move on to another location to do it all again.
—Michael Greshko, Scientific American, 24 July 2024
Quartz Bot, Quartz, 8 Nov. 2024
The intersections between cultural assay and quotidian life must have been all around her as the wife of an English literature professor jockeying for tenure.
—Will Self, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Assay.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assay. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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