verb

• (intransitive) Of an animal (now chiefly of animals related to the ass or donkey, and the camel): to make its cry.
  "Whenever I walked by, that donkey brayed at me."
• (intransitive, by extension) To make a harsh, discordant sound like a donkey's bray.
  "He threw back his head and brayed with laughter."
• (transitive) To make or utter (a shout, sound, etc.) discordantly, loudly, or in a harsh and grating manner.
  "[N]ow ſtorming furie roſe, / And clamour ſuch as heard in Heav'n till now / Was never, Arms on Armour claſhing bray'd / Horrible discord, and the madding Wheeles / Of brazen Chariots rag'd; [...]"

noun

• (by extension) Any discordant, grating, or harsh sound.
  "It seems a very nest—warm and snug, and green—for human life; with the twilight haze of time about it, almost consecrating it from the aching hopes and feverish expectations of the present. Who would think that the bray and roar of multitudinous London sounded but some sixty miles away?"

verb

• (transitive, archaic) To crush or pound, especially using a pestle and mortar.
  "Though thou ſhouldeſt bray a fool in a morter among wheate with a peſtell, yet will not his fooliſhneſſe depart from him."
• (transitive, British, chiefly Yorkshire, by extension) To hit (someone or something).
  "If anything he brayed him all the harder – the old family bull recognising his fighting days were close to over."