Unusual use of the word "pray"

Question

I understand that the use of the word "pray"in the context of "pray tell" has been discussed on this site extensively. I was wondering whether I can use it in conjunction with the same word in its other meaning. For example, can I say "Pray, pray!" to enjoin a child to say his benedictions?

Answer 1

You can see the top 10 verbs also used with "pray" at this Google Ngram. (I have restricted the scale to 1960 so that relative values are easier to see. Values for this construction were much higher in the mid/late-1800s and so make it hard to see values for modern speech.)

As you can see, "pray tell" is the most common bigram since 1980, followed by "pray is" and "pray do."

• "Pray is" is usually used either in an infinitive "... to pray is to ...," as can be seen in this search as well as in other constructions that aren't relevant.
• "Pray do" is mostly made up of cross-sentence findings, like "How do you pray? Do you make up your prayers ..." But, Social and Cultural Heritage of Sikkim and Bhutan has a list of commands that are more parallel to the question you ask about:

Pray do not injure the human beings of the upper regions! Pray do not injure the lower animals of the lower regions! Pray do not injure the crops of the fields! Pray do not injure the moisture of the plants! Pray do not injure the essence of wealth!

• A search through the result pages for the remaining words find no relevant results for "let," "according," "will," "be," and "give."
• There are, however, results for "pray take" and "pray send." From Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall, dated 1967 (but I do believe it's a replication of an earlier letter). Other results are reproductions of letters form earlier time frames.

If it bears berries or seeds, pray send some ; and if it bears flowers or seeds, pray send some specimens in both states.

Likewise, "pray take" has only much older references. You can look up results for the down-the-line bigramas for yourself by Googling "pray take" (with quotes) under Google Books, Search English pages.

So, to conclude, no you can't really use "pray VERB" in modern English. It might be marginally understandable, but "pray tell" is old-fashioned, marked, and most likely completely fossilized in most (all?) dialects of English.

I imagine your literature-reading friends would understand you if you said "pray send me a text when you arrive," but a child is like to stare at you blankly if you implore them "pray, pray!"