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To spay an animal is to operate on a female animal — usually a cat or dog — and remove her reproductive organs so she can never have babies. It is a normal, planned operation done by a vet, not something cruel or accidental, and most pet owners in Taiwan do it. The important thing about this word is that it is sex-specific. Spay is only for females. For a male animal the word is neuter or, more , fix. Neuter can cover both sexes in careful writing, and 'get your pet fixed' covers both in casual speech — but spay never covers a male. It is also animals-only. Vets spay cats, dogs, rabbits. You never use spay about a person; for humans there are completely different medical words. You will most often meet it in the passive — 'she's already been spayed' — and on posters and clinic signs: 'Spay and neuter your pets.' One more real-life note: many people say the shorter, gentler expressions instead — 'she's done', 'she's fixed', 'she's been to the vet'. Spay is the correct, plain, unembarrassed word, and the one written on the bill.
結紮（母的動物）、絕育；台灣獸醫診所常說「母貓／母狗結紮」或「絕育手術」（公的動物叫 neuter）
組成From Middle English spayen, from Anglo-Norman espeier, from Old French espeer, 'to cut with a sword', from espee 'sword' — the word that became modern French épée. So the old picture inside it is simply cutting with a blade.
同家族的字
- épéethe fencing sword, borrowed into English from French — the same espee 'sword' that spay comes from
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
spayverb詞源 1/speɪ/
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To destroy or remove the ovaries or uterus (of a female animal) to prevent pregnancy.
- We’re having our cat spayed as we don’t want her having kittens.
- With their eye on non-island countries, namely America, the authors of Cat Wars argue for a combination of spay/neuter programs, enclosed sanctuaries, and euthanasia.
spaynoun詞源 1/speɪ/
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The act of spaying an animal.
- I was queasy about my first spay of a far-gone feral and left it up to my vet.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。