What is "ply"

Ply \Ply\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Plied; p. pr. & vb. n. Plying.] [OE. plien, F. plier to fold, to bend, fr. L. plicare; akin to Gr. ?, G. flechten. Cf. Apply, Complex, Display, Duplicity, Employ, Exploit, Implicate, Plait, Pliant, Flax.]

1. To bend. [Obs.]

   As men may warm wax with handes plie.
   --Chaucer.

2. To lay on closely, or in folds; to work upon steadily, or with repeated acts; to press upon; to urge importunately; as, to ply one with questions, with solicitations, or with drink.

   And plies him with redoubled strokes
   --Dryden.

   He plies the duke at morning and at night.
   --Shak.

3. To employ diligently; to use steadily.

   Go ply thy needle; meddle not.
   --Shak.

4. To practice or perform with diligence; to work at.

   Their bloody task, unwearied, still they ply.
   --Waller.

Ply \Ply\, v. i.

1. To bend; to yield. [Obs.]

   It would rather burst atwo than plye.
   --Chaucer.

   The willow plied, and gave way to the gust.
   --L'Estrange.

2. To act, go, or work diligently and steadily; especially, to do something by repeated actions; to go back and forth; as, a steamer plies between certain ports.

   Ere half these authors be read (which will soon be with plying hard and daily).
   --Milton.

   He was forced to ply in the streets as a porter.
   --Addison.

   The heavy hammers and mallets plied.
   --Longfellow.

3. (Naut.) To work to windward; to beat.

Ply \Ply\, n. [Cf. F. pli, fr. plier. See Ply, v.]

1. A fold; a plait; a turn or twist, as of a cord.
   --Arbuthnot.

2. Bent; turn; direction; bias.

   The late learners can not so well take the ply.
   --Bacon.

   Boswell, and others of Goldsmith's contemporaries, . . . did not understand the secret plies of his character.
   --W. Irving.

   The czar's mind had taken a strange ply, which it retained to the last.
   --Macaulay.

   Note: Ply is used in composition to designate folds, or the number of webs interwoven; as, a three-ply carpet.

"work with, use," late 14c., shortened form of applien "join to, apply" (see apply). The core of this is Latin plicare "to lay, fold, twist," from PIE root *plek- "to plait, twist" (cognates: Greek plekein "to plait, twine," plektos "twisted;" Latin plectere (past participle plexus) "to plait, braid, intertwine;" Old Church Slavonic plesti "to braid, plait, twist;" Gothic flahta "braid;" Old English fleax "cloth made with flax, linen").\n

\nSense of "travel regularly" is first 1803, perhaps from earlier sense "steer a course" (1550s). Related: Plied; plies; plying.

"a layer, a fold" 1530s, from Middle French pli "a fold" (13c.), alteration of Old French ploi "fold, pleat, layer" (12c.), verbal noun from ployer (later pleier) "to bend, to fold," from Latin plicare "to fold, lay" see ply (v.1)). This is the ply in plywood.

"to bend," late 14c., plien, from Old French plier, earlier pleier "to fold, bend," from Latin plicare "to lay, fold, twist" (see ply (v.1)). Related: Plied; plies; plying.

Etymology 1 n. 1 A layer of material. 2 A strand that, twisted together with other strands, makes up yarn or rope. 3 (context colloquial English) plywood. 4 (context artificial intelligence game theory English) In two-player sequential games, a "half-turn", or one move made by one of the players. 5 (context now chiefly Scotland English) state, condition. Etymology 2

vb. 1 (context transitive English) to bend#Verb; to fold#Verb. 2 (context intransitive English) to flex#Verb. Etymology 3

vb. 1 (context transitive English) To work#Verb at diligent#Adjectively. 2 (context intransitive English) To work diligently. 3 (context transitive English) To use#Verb vigorously. 4 (context transitive English) To travel#Verb over regular#Adjectively. 5 (context transitive English) To persist#Verb in offering. 6 To press upon; to urge importunately. 7 To employ diligently; to use steadily. 8 (context nautical English) To work to windward; to beat.

1. n. one of the strands twisted together to make yarn or rope or thread; often used in combination; "three-ply cord"; "four-ply yarn"

2. (usually in combinations) one of several layers of cloth or paper or wood as in plywood

3. v. provide what is desired or needed, especially support, food or sustenance; "The hostess provided lunch for all the guests" [syn: provide, supply, cater]

4. apply oneself diligently; "Ply one's trade"

5. travel a route regularly; "Ships ply the waters near the coast" [syn: run]

6. wield vigorously; "ply an axe"

7. use diligently; "ply your wits!"

8. [also: plied]

Ply, Pli, Plies or Plying may refer to:

• Ply (game theory), a turn in game play
• PLY (file format) or Polygon File Format
• Plying, a spinning technique to make yarn
• Plies (rapper), American rapper
• Pli, an academic journal
• Ply, a layer of paper or wood, such as with toilet paper, tissue paper, paper towels or plywood
• PLY, an implementation of the yacc parsing tool for the Python programming language
• Tire ply, a layer of cords embedded in the rubber of a tire

In two-player sequential games, a ply refers to one turn taken by one of the players. The word is used to clarify what is meant when one might otherwise say "turn".

"Turn" is problematic since it means different things in different traditions. For example, in standard chess terminology, one move consists of a turn by each player; therefore a ply in chess is a half-move. Thus, after 20 moves in a chess game, 40 plies have been completed—20 by white and 20 by black. In the game of Go, by contrast, a ply is the normal unit of counting moves; so for example to say that a game is 250 moves long is to imply 250 plies.

The word "ply" used as a synonym for "layer" goes back to the 15th century. Arthur Samuel used the term in its game-theoretic sense in his seminal paper on machine learning in checkers in 1959.

In computing, the concept of ply is important because one ply corresponds to one level of the game tree. The Deep Blue chess computer which defeated Kasparov in 1997 would typically search to a depth of between six and sixteen plies to a maximum of forty plies in some situations.

PLY is a computer file format known as the Polygon File Format or the Stanford Triangle Format. It was principally designed to store three-dimensional data from 3D scanners. The data storage format supports a relatively simple description of a single object as a list of nominally flat polygons. A variety of properties can be stored, including: color and transparency, surface normals, texture coordinates and data confidence values. The format permits one to have different properties for the front and back of a polygon. There are two versions of the file format, one in ASCII, the other in binary.

PLY is a parsing tool written purely in Python. It is basically a re-implementation of Lex and Yacc originally in C-language. It was written by David Beazley. Unlike Lex and Yacc in C which uses LALR parsing technique, PLY uses LR parsing which can incorporate large grammars easily. PLY also has extensive debugging and error reporting facilities.