To display; unfold; spread out; hence, to cut up; carve: as, to splay a fish.To dislocate, as a horse's shoulder.In architecture, to slope; form with an oblique angle, as the jambs or sides of a window. See the noun.n. Spread; flare.n. In architecture, a sloped surface, or a surface which makes an oblique angle with another, as when the opening through a wall for a door or window widens from the position of the door or window proper toward the face of the wall. A large chamfer is called a splay.n. In fortification, the outward widening of an embrasure from the mouth toward the exterior of the parapet. See embrasure.Spread or spreading out; wide and flat; turned outward; hence, clumsy; awkward. See splay-foot, splay-mouth.Same as spay.In cooperage, to form (a barrel) by drawing it together at the ends.