Pray is a verb meaning to speak to a god or to beg earnestly: "She prays every evening." Prey is a noun meaning the creature something hunts, and a verb meaning to hunt or exploit: "Foxes prey on rabbits"; "scammers prey on the elderly." The two sound identical in most accents, so spelling is decided entirely by meaning.
The core difference
These words share a sound and nothing else. Pray belongs to worship and pleading. Prey belongs to hunting, in both the literal sense (what a predator eats) and the figurative one (people who are targeted and taken advantage of).
Using pray
Pray is almost always a verb, and it takes for or to: you pray to someone, and for something.
- They prayed for rain after the third dry month.
- He prays quietly at the back of the chapel.
- I'm praying the results come through before Friday.
The related noun is prayer, which keeps the a of pray — the religious words are the a words.
Using prey
As a noun, prey is what gets hunted: "the eagle spotted its prey." It is uncountable in that sense, so you write prey, not preys. As a verb it is nearly always followed by on or upon:
- Barn owls prey on voles and mice.
- These loan companies prey on people who cannot get credit anywhere else.
- The worry preyed on her mind for weeks.
That last example is worth noticing: something that preys on your mind is gnawing at you. It is still the hunting word, used figuratively.
The test to run
Try swapping in a plain synonym. If plead or worship fits, you want pray. If hunt, target or victim fits, you want prey.
"They ___ for peace" — they plead for peace, so: pray. "Sharks ___ on seals" — sharks hunt seals, so: prey.
If the sound-alike still trips you up, link the a in pray to the a in praise, and the e in prey to the e in predator.
The mistake people actually make
By far the commonest slip is writing "prey for you" or "praying on the weak". Both reverse the pair. A second, subtler one: the phrase is fall prey to, never "fall pray to" — someone who falls prey to a scam has been hunted, not blessed.
One more spelling to keep separate: pray and prey both differ from pry, which means to lever something open or to nose into other people's business.
