lay
To place down in a position of rest, or in a horizontal position.
A stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den.
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.
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’.
(archaic) To cause to subside or abate.
He faced the spectres of the mind / And laid them: thus he came at length / To find a stronger faith his own; / And Power was with him in the night, / Which makes the darkness and the light, / And dwells not in the light alone, / But in the darkness and the cloud
Tessie lay among the cushions, her face a gray blot in the gloom, but her hands were clasped in mine and I knew that she knew and read my thoughts as I read hers, for we had understood the mystery of the Hyades and the Phantom of Truth was laid.
To prepare (a plan, project etc.); to set out, establish (a law, principle).
To install certain building materials, laying one thing on top of another.
To produce and deposit (an egg or eggs).
To bet (that something is or is not the case).
To deposit (a stake) as a wager; to stake; to risk.
I dare lay mine honour / He will remain so.
He laid a hundred guineas with the laird of Slofferfield that he would drive four horses through the Slofferfield loch, and in the prank he had his bit chariot dung to pieces and a good mare killed.
(slang) To have sex with.
'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.'
(law) To state; to allege.
(military) To point; to aim.
(ropemaking) To put the strands of (a rope, a cable, etc.) in their proper places and twist or unite them.
(printing) To place and arrange (pages) for a form upon the imposing stone.
(printing) To place (new type) properly in the cases.
To apply; to put.
She layeth her hands to the spindle.
To impose (a burden, punishment, command, tax, etc.).
The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
To impute; to charge; to allege.
God layeth not folly to them.
Lay the fault on us.
To present or offer.
To produce and deposit an egg or eggs.
(nautical) To take a position; to come or go.
If ever there was a perfect beauty afloat, she is one; and there she lays at Spithead, and anybody in England would take her for an eight-and-twenty. I was upon the platform two hours this afternoon, looking at her. She lays just astern of the Endymion, with the Cleopatra to larboard.
(proscribed) To lie: to rest in a horizontal position on a surface.
Arrangement or relationship; layout.
A share of the profits in a business.
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.
The direction a rope is twisted.
(colloquial) A casual sexual partner.
(colloquial) An act of sexual intercourse.
(slang, archaic) A place or activity where someone spends a significant portion of their time.
I shall be on that lay nae mair
Since our people have moved this boy on, and he's not to be found on his old lay
The laying of eggs.
(obsolete) A layer.
(obsolete) A basis or ground.
(thieves' cant, obsolete) A pursuit or practice; a dodge.
(lake) A lake.
Not belonging to the clergy, but associated with them.
Non-professional; not being a member of an organized institution.
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.
(card games) Not trumps.
(obsolete) Not educated or cultivated; ignorant.
To be oriented in a horizontal position, situated.
A ballad or sung poem; a short poem or narrative, usually intended to be sung.
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, / Were taken to be such as closed / Grave doubts and answers here proposed, / Then these were such as men might scorn: […]
A lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance.
Sad is the note and sad the lay, / but mirth we meet not every day.
(obsolete) A meadow; a lea.
(obsolete) A law.
(obsolete) An obligation; a vow.
(Judaism) To don or put on (tefillin (phylacteries)).
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