hay [OE] An ancient word that goes back to around ad 800 in Old English. The phrase to make hay, ‘to make good use of an opportunity while it lasts’, is a shortening of the proverbial recommendation make hay while the sun shines, which has been in use since the 16th century. Since the late 19th century North American farmers have employed haywire to bind bales of hay and corn. Others found other uses for it, so that haywire came to describe anything patched together or poorly equipped. By the 1920s to go haywire meant ‘to go wrong’, and in the 1930s it was extended to cover people who were mentally disturbed or out of control.