V.A. Editing

In many accents of English pray and prey are pronounced in the same way, hence the potential for mixing them up when writing.

As an author, you are probably so focused on getting your ideas down on the page that this kind of small mistake can slip by unnoticed.

Unfortunately, depending upon the overall grammar of the sentence, this type of error might not be picked up by your spelling and grammar checking software. So, this kind of slip is definitely worth watching out for during the manual editing and proofreading process.

To be sure you have chosen the correct word for your context, let’s clarify the difference in meaning between pray and prey.

What does pray mean?

Pray (with the a) has several possible meanings, the first of which is a verb meaning ‘to speak to a god either privately or in a religious ceremony in order to express love, admiration, or thanks or in order to ask for something’. For example:

• She prays twice a day, every day.
• We must pray for forgiveness.

Pray can also be used as a verb meaning ‘to hope for something very much’. For example:

• We’re praying for good weather on our wedding day.
• The kids had been praying for a nice treat, but were disappointed.

What does prey mean?

Prey (with the e) also has several meanings. It can be a noun referring to ‘an animal that is hunted and killed for food by another animal’. For example:

• The tiger slowly stalked its prey.
• The birds in my garden often make easy prey for my neighbour’s cat.

The noun prey can also be used to refer to ‘someone who can be easily deceived or harmed’. For example:

• The touts saw the tourists as easy prey.

That’s not all though. Prey can be found in the related phrasal verb ‘to prey on’, which has the meaning ‘to harm somebody who is weaker than you are’, such as:

• That sales company makes a lot of money by preying on naïve customers.

Finally, prey is part of the idiomatic phrase ‘to fall prey to something’, as in:

• Elderly people sometimes fall prey to complex telephone scams.

To recap then, pray (with the a) relates to prayer and hoping, whereas prey (with the e) relates to being hunted or targeted in some way.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

*All definitions were sourced from the Cambridge Dictionary Online.