lay

• enPR: lā, IPA^(key): /leɪ/

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• Rhymes: -eɪ
• Homophones: lei, ley

From Middle English layen, leggen, from Old English leċġan (“to lay”), from Proto-Germanic *lagjaną (“to lay”), causative form of Proto-Germanic *ligjaną (“to lie, recline”), from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ- (“to lie, recline”). Cognate with West Frisian lizze (“to lay, to lie”), Dutch leggen (“to lay”), German legen (“to lay”), Norwegian Bokmål legge (“to lay”), Norwegian Nynorsk leggja (“to lay”), Swedish lägga (“to lay”), Icelandic leggja (“to lay”), Albanian lag (“troop, band, war encampment”).

lay (third-person singular simple present lays, present participle laying, simple past and past participle laid)

1. (transitive) To place down in a position of rest, or in a horizontal position.

   to lay a book on the table;   to lay a body in the grave

   A shower of rain lays the dust.

   • Bible, Daniel vi. 17

     A stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den.

   • 1735, author unknown, The New-England Primer, as reported by Fred R. Shapiro in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Yale University Press, pages 549–550:

     Now I lay me down to sleep, / I pray the Lord my Soul to keep. / If I should die before I ’wake, / I pray the Lord my Soul to take.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 1, in The Celebrity:

     He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him.

   • 1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part I, London: Collins, →ISBN:

     An indulgent playmate, Grannie would lay aside the long scratchy-looking letter she was writing (heavily crossed ‘to save notepaper’) and enter into the delightful pastime of ‘a chicken from Mr Whiteley's’.

   A corresponding intransitive version of this word is lie.

2. (transitive, archaic) To cause to subside or abate.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:

     The cloudes, as things affrayd, before him flye; / But all so soone as his outrageous powre / Is layd, they fiercely then begin to shoure […]

   • 1662, Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems, Dialogue 2:

     But how upon the winds being laid, doth the ship cease to move?

3. (transitive) To prepare (a plan, project etc.); to set out, establish (a law, principle).
   • 2006, Clive James, North Face of Soho, Picador 2007, p. 48:

     Even when I lay a long plan, it is never in the expectation that I will live to see it fulfilled.

4. (transitive) To install certain building materials, laying one thing on top of another.

   lay brick;  lay flooring

5. (transitive) To produce and deposit an egg.
6. (transitive) To bet (that something is or is not the case).

   I'll lay that he doesn't turn up on Monday.

7. (transitive) To deposit (a stake) as a wager; to stake; to risk.
   • William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

     I dare lay mine honour / He will remain so.

8. (transitive, slang) To have sex with.
   • 1944, Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake, Penguin 2011, p. 11:

     ‘It's because he's a no-good son of a bitch who thinks it is smart to lay his friends' wives and brag about it.’

9. (nautical) To take a position; to come or go.

   to lay forward;  to lay aloft

10. (law) To state; to allege.

    to lay the venue

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Bouvier to this entry?)

11. (military) To point; to aim.

    to lay a gun

12. (ropemaking) To put the strands of (a rope, a cable, etc.) in their proper places and twist or unite them.

    to lay a cable or rope

13. (printing) To place and arrange (pages) for a form upon the imposing stone.
14. (printing) To place (new type) properly in the cases.
15. To apply; to put.
    • Bible, Proverbs xxxi. 19

      She layeth her hands to the spindle.

16. To impose (a burden, punishment, command, tax, etc.).

    to lay a tax on land

    • Bible, Isaiah liii. 6

      The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

17. To impute; to charge; to allege.
    • Bible, Job xxiv. 12

      God layeth not folly to them.

    • William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

      Lay the fault on us.

18. To present or offer.

    to lay an indictment in a particular county;   to lay a scheme before one

The verb lay is sometimes used interchangeably with the verb lie in informal spoken settings. This can lead to nonstandard constructions which are sometimes objected to. This usage is common in speech but rarely found in edited writing or in more formal spoken situations.

• “lay” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, →ISBN.

lay (countable and uncountable, plural lays)

1. Arrangement or relationship; layout.

   the lay of the land

2. A share of the profits in a business.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 16

     I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship’s company.

3. A lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance.
   • 1945: "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun" by JRR Tolkien

     Sad is the note and sad the lay,
     but mirth we meet not every day.

4. The direction a rope is twisted.

   Worm and parcel with the lay; turn and serve the other way.

5. (colloquial) A casual sexual partner.
   • 1996, JoAnn Ross, Southern Comforts, MIRA (1996), →ISBN, page 166:

     Over the years she'd tried to tell himself that his uptown girl was just another lay.

   • 2000, R. J. Kaiser, Fruitcake, MIRA (2000), →ISBN, page 288:

     To find a place like that and be discreet about it, Jones figured he needed help, so he went to see his favorite lay, Juan Carillo's woman, Carmen.

   • 2011, Kelly Meding, Trance, Pocket Books (2011), →ISBN, pages 205-206:

     “Because I don't want William to be just another lay. I did the slut thing, T, and it got me into a lot of trouble years ago. […]

   What was I, just another lay you can toss aside as you go on to your next conquest?

6. (colloquial) An act of sexual intercourse.
   • 1993, David Halberstam, The Fifties, Open Road Integrated Media (2012), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

     Listening to this dismissal of his work, [Tennessee] Williams thought to himself of Wilder, “This character has never had a good lay.”

   • 2009, Fern Michaels, The Scoop, Kensington Books (2009), →ISBN, pages 212-213:

     […] She didn't become this germ freak until Thomas died. I wonder if she just needs a good lay, you know, an all-nighter?" Toots said thoughtfully.

   • 2011, Pamela Yaye, Promises We Make, Kimani Press (2011), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

     “What she needs is a good lay. If she had someone to rock her world on a regular basis, she wouldn't be such a raging bit—”

7. (slang, archaic) A plan; a scheme.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Charles Dickens to this entry?)

8. (uncountable) the laying of eggs.

   The hens are off the lay at present.

9. (obsolete) A layer.
   • 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, p. 5,

     […] lay in the bottom of an earthen pot some dried vine leaves, and so make a lay of Pears, and leaves till the pot is filled up, laying betwixt each lay some sliced Ginger […]

   • 1718, Joseph Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703, London: J. Tonson, “Sienna, Leghorne, Pisa,” p. 300,

     […] the whole Body of the Church is chequer’d with different Lays of White and Black Marble […]

   • 1724, Thomas Spooner, A Compendious Treatise of the Diseases of the Skin, London, Chapter 2, p. 20,

     […] when we examine the Scarf-Skin with a Microscope, it appears to be made up of several Lays of exceeding small Scales, which cover one another more or less […]

   • 1766, Thomas Amory, The Life of John Buncle, Esq., London: J. Johnson and B. Davenport, Volume 2, Section 1, p. 16, footnote 1,

     […] in one particular it exceeds the fen birds, for it has two tastes; it being brown and white meat: under a lay of brown is a lay of white meat […]

• (casual sexual partner): see also Thesaurus:casual sexual partner.

• inlay
• lay of the land
• off the lay
• overlay

From Middle English laie, lawe, from Old English lagu (“sea, flood, water, ocean”), from Proto-Germanic *laguz (“water, sea”), from Proto-Indo-European *lakw- (“water, body of water, lake”). Cognate with Icelandic lögur (“liquid, fluid, lake”), Latin lacus (“lake, hollow, hole”).

lay (plural lays)

1. A lake.

From Old French lai, from Latin laicus, from Ancient Greek λαϊκός (laïkós).

lay (comparative more lay, superlative most lay)

1. Non-professional; not being a member of an organized institution.
   • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VII:

     He hasn't caught a mouse since he was a slip of a kitten. Except when eating, he does nothing but sleep. [...] It's a sort of disease. There's a scientific name for it. Trau- something. Traumatic symplegia, that's it. This cat has traumatic symplegia. In other words, putting it in simple language adapted to the lay mind, where other cats are content to get their eight hours, Augustus wants his twenty-four.

2. Not belonging to the clergy, but associated with them.

   They seemed more lay than clerical.

   a lay preacher; a lay brother

3. (obsolete) Not educated or cultivated; ignorant.

• laity
• layman
• layperson
• lay person
• laywoman

See lie

lay

1. simple past tense of lie when pertaining to position.

   The baby lay in its crib and slept silently.

2. (proscribed) To be in a horizontal position; to lie (from confusion with lie).
   • 1969 July, Bob Dylan, “Lay Lady Lay”, Nashville Skyline, Columbia:

     Lay, lady, lay. / Lay across my big brass bed.

   • a. 1970, Paul Simon, Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer”, Bridge over Troubled Water, Columbia Records:

     Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters / Where the ragged people go

   • 1974, John Denver, “Annie’s Song”, Back Home Again, RCA:

     Let me lay down beside you. / Let me always be with you.

• layabout

From Middle English lay, from Old French lai (“song, lyric, poem”), from Frankish *laih (“play, melody, song”), from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, *laikiz (“jump, play, dance, hymn”), from Proto-Indo-European *loyg-, *layǵ- (“to jump, spring, play”). Akin to Old High German leih (“a play, skit, melody, song”), Middle High German leich (“piece of music, epic song played on a harp”), Old English lācan (“to move quickly, fence, sing”). See lake.

lay (plural lays)

1. A ballad or sung poem; a short poem or narrative, usually intended to be sung.
   • 1742, Edward Young, The Complaint: or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality, Night I

     I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer

     The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee,

     And call the stars to listen: every star

     Is deaf to mine, enamour’d of thy lay.

   • 1805 The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Sir Walter Scott.

lay (plural lays)

1. (obsolete) A meadow; a lea.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

lay (plural lays)

1. (obsolete) A law.
   • Spenser

     many goodly lays

2. (obsolete) An obligation; a vow.
   • Holland

     They bound themselves by a sacred lay and oath.

Calque of Yiddish לייגן‎ (leygn, “to put, lay”).

lay (third-person singular simple present lays, present participle laying, simple past and past participle laid)

1. (Judaism, transitive) To don or put on (tefillin (phylacteries)).

• Aly

Common Malayo-Polynesian, compare Indonesian layar

lay

1. sail

From French ail

lay

1. garlic

From Malagasy ley (butterfly)

lay

1. moth

• Baker, Philip & Hookoomsing, Vinesh Y. 1987. Dictionnaire de créole mauricien. Morisyen – English – Français

From French ail

lay

1. garlic

From Malagasy ley (butterfly)

lay

1. moth

• Danielle D’Offay et Guy Lionnet, Diksyonner Kreol - Franse / Dictionnaire Créole Seychellois - Français