Relay

There are two verbs 'to relay'. Depending on their meaning, their form changes. The stress with which they are pronounced is also different.

• One is a regular verb - relay ~ relayed. Its general meaning is 'to hand over'. In athletics, a relay race is when each runner in a team runs a fraction of the total distance before relaying a baton (short stick) to the next. In a relay broadcast, subordinate transmitters pick up a master signal from the bas and retransmit it on to the next. Although the related noun is always stressed on the first syllable, different speakers have different stresses on the verb: 'REE-lay', 're-LAY' or approximately equal.
• The other relay is an irregular verb - it is derived from to the irregular verb 'to lay'. It means 'to lay again'. It is stressed according to the meaning the speaker gives it: of he wants to emphasise the 'again', he will say 'REE-lay'; if the action of laying, he will say 're-LAY'. If there is any danger of ambiguity when you write this word, which may be unlikely, spell it with a hyphen: re-lay.

The forms of the irregular verb 'to relay' are:

Base form	past tense	-ed participle	Notes
relay	relaid	relaid

This is one of the "the 250 or so irregular verbs" listed in Quirk 1985. The list "contains most of the irregular verbs in present-day English ... but is not meant to be exhaustive, particularly with regard to derivative verbs." AWE has been quite selective in its drawing on that list. The verb 'to relay' belongs to Quirk's Class Note 3. 10