relayer

relay +‎ -er

relayer (plural relayers)

1. One who, or that which, relays.
2. An athlete who takes part in a relay race.

re- +‎ layer

relayer (third-person singular simple present relayers, present participle relayering, simple past and past participle relayered)

1. To layer again.

From re- +‎ laier (“old dialect term: to leave”).

• IPA^(key): /ʁə.lɛ.je/, /ʁə.le.je/

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relayer

1. (historical, intransitive) to relay, change horses
   • 1874, Barbey d'Aurevilly, ‘Le Rideau cramoisi’, Les Diaboliques:

     La rue, – où passaient chaque nuit deux diligences en sens inverses […] qui toutes deux s’arrêtaient à l’Hôtel de la Poste pour relayer, – la rue était silencieuse comme le fond d’un puits.

     The street – where every night two carriages passed in opposite directions, both of which stopped at the Hôtel de la Poste to change horses – the street was as silent as the bottom of a well.

2. (transitive) to relieve, take over from
3. (transitive) to replace
4. (transitive) to transmit, relay (information)
5. (reflexive) to take turns, to alternate

This is a regular -er verb as far as pronunciation is concerned, but as with other verbs in -ayer (such as payer and essayer, the <y> of its stem may optionally be written as <i> when it precedes a silent <e> (compare verbs in -eyer, which never have this spelling change, and verbs in -oyer and -uyer, which always have it; verbs in -ayer belong to either group, according to the writer's preference).

• “relayer”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.