verb

• (transitive)
  "Thiſſame ſo great a chaunge of the world, begoonne within a fewe yeares after Chriſt was putte to death, to be made generall and common through al the whold worlde, and withoute any maintenaunce or ſupportacion of mã [man], it encreaced from tyme to tyme ſtill more and more, vntyll the piece of leauen beeyng miengled in three peckes of meale did leauen and turne al the whole batche, and vntill the graine of muſtard ſeed beeyng digged into the yearth, did ferre and wyde ſpleigh his boughes abrode ouer Aſia, ouer Afrike, and Europe."
• (transitive)
  "When entrance and egress [through a door] are constant, it may be supposed that the valves will be absent or unfastened,—that people will be passing more quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent, and that the square angles of the wall will be inconvenient to such quick passers through. […] [T]hese angles, which would be worn away by friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called, splayed, and the most contracted part of the aperture made as short as possible, […]"
• (transitive)
• (transitive)

adj

• (figurative) Crooked, distorted, out of place.
  "splay shoulders"

noun

• (architecture, also attributive)
  "The daylight was so lowered by the impervious roof of cloud overhead that it scarcely reached further into Lord Mountclere's entrance-hall than to the splays of the windows, even but an hour or two after midday; […]"
• (architecture, also attributive)
• (road transport)
  "visibility splay"
• (road transport)

verb

• (transitive, obsolete except Ireland, Lincolnshire, Shropshire) Synonym of spay (“to destroy or remove the ovaries and/or uterus (of a female animal) to prevent pregnancy”).
  "Sovves alſo are ſplaied as vvell as camels, but tvvo daies before, they be kept from meat; then hang they them by the forelegs for to make inciſion into their matrice [womb], and to take forth their ſtones: and by this means they vvill ſooner grovv to be fat."