sunray vs shaft of light

sunray and shaft of light both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
sunray	Yes	No	No	No
shaft of light	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, shaft of light is a hypernym of sunray; that is, shaft of light is a word with a broader meaning than sunray:

Other hypernyms of sunray include beam, beam of light, irradiation, light beam, ray, ray of light, shaft.

sunray (noun)	shaft of light (noun)
a ray of sunlight	a column of light (as from a beacon)
a ray of artificial ultraviolet light from a sunray lamp
herb having a basal cluster of grey-green leaves and leafless stalks each with a solitary broad yellow flower head; desert areas Idaho to Arizona