0 past simple and past participle of essay
1 to try to do something:
The procedure was first essayed in 1923.
Descartes essayed two responses, both of them based on a mechanistic account of visual stimulation.
Reading conventional historical sources, chronicles, and pamphlets, alongside play texts, they essayed an interdisciplinary study of spectacles - on the stages of the theatre, the city, and the nation.
Martineau essayed to make the factory system itself a source of sweetness and light, a mass-producer of individuality, humanity, and morality and the means by which workers could culture themselves.
It is perhaps the biggest task that we have ever essayed in our history.
I would not pay much attention to him on these matters, after what he has essayed to publish.
Were any change essayed, it would affect many other questions.
In the course of our proceedings upstairs he essayed to embroil me in this somewhat embarrassing controversy surrounding the position of certain colliery managers in my constituency.
The squadron essayed further action on the enemy forces after nightfall and achieved considerable success; indeed, it returned to base with sixty prisoners of war.
