What does lay mean

Crossword clues for lay

lay

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

lay

COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES

a bird lays its eggs

▪ The bird lays a single egg on the ground.

draw up/lay down a code (=create one)

▪ The syndicate decided to draw up a code of conduct for its members.

fit/lay a carpet (=cut it to fit a room and fix it to the floor)

▪ Will it cost extra to have the carpet fitted?

give your life/lay down your life (=die in order to save other people, or because of a strong belief)

▪ These men gave their lives during the war to keep us free.

laid down by statute (=established by law)

▪ Protection for the consumer is laid down by statute .

laid...groundwork

▪ His speech laid the groundwork for independence.

laid...wreath

▪ The prime minister laid a wreath at the war memorial.

lay a pipe

▪ They were digging a trench to lay water pipes.

lay down a principle (=describe a principle and make it accepted)

▪ The report lays down general principles for the teaching of English.

lay down/establish ground rules for sth

▪ Our book lays down the ground rules for building a patio successfully.

lay down/set/impose conditions (=say what sb must agree to)

▪ They laid down certain conditions before agreeing to the ceasefire.

lay flat on...back

▪ That night I lay flat on my back and stared up at the ceiling.

lay flat

▪ He lay flat on the floor.

lay mines (=put them in place)

▪ They learnt how to lay mines.

lay off employees (=stop employing them because there is no work for them to do)

▪ Unions fear that many part-time employees will be laid off.

lay on/put on entertainment (=organize and provide it)

▪ The organizers laid on some entertainment for the children.

lay reader

lay...eggs

▪ Blackbirds lay their eggs in March.

lay...foundations

▪ It took the builders three weeks to lay the foundations.

lay/place sth end to end (=in a line, with the ends touching)

▪ The roof tiles are laid end to end.

lay/run a cable (=put one in position somewhere)

▪ In the 1860s the first cables were laid under the oceans.

lay/set a trap (for sb)

▪ Mr Smith has walked straight into a trap laid by the Tories.

place/lay emphasis on sthformal

▪ The coach has placed the emphasis firmly on youth by including three teenagers in the team.

place/put/lay a bet on sth

▪ She placed a bet on a horse called Beethoven.

prepare/lay the ground (=to provide the situation or conditions in which something can develop successfully)

set/lay down a standard

▪ The government sets standards that all hospitals must reach.

set/lay the table (=put knives, forks etc on a table before a meal)

▪ The table was set for fourteen.

COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS

■ ADVERB

ahead

▪ These early months gave him a brutally clear idea of what lay ahead.

▪ Although generally optimistic, Dan knew that more challenges lay ahead.

▪ Dark pines and yellow birches lay ahead, as the shoreline curved to meet me.

▪ And almost alone among the early Hmong arrivals, he could see that storm signals lay ahead.

▪ But that life was over now and a new one lay ahead.

▪ But no one was better equipped for the psychological warfare that lay ahead.

▪ Then the nakedness was covered: he had seen what lay ahead.

▪ The turning point into a new year was a thoughtful time, when one weighed the past against what lay ahead.

aside

▪ On the day of the wedding, just for a short while, all strife was laid aside.

▪ By then, he supposed, he would have enough laid aside to begin his own business.

▪ They must also lay aside their personal feelings.

▪ He could afford to lay aside his anger against the Trojans.

▪ There were of course occasions when Franz's great sword was laid aside, other instruments being required for the administration of justice.

▪ A few weeks later I laid aside my steak knife for good.

▪ Big sentences about Britain's place in the world have been laid aside.

▪ I clambered on to the wheelbarrow, to pray for a healing miracle, laying aside my glasses and hat.

down

▪ Strips of old carpet had been laid down in rows, like pews.

▪ When we halted... the rebels halted and lay down on the ground.

▪ Collective bargaining is a flexible instrument and can build upon the minimum standards which the law lays down.

▪ She raised her head off the bed, lay down on her side and curled up.

▪ She laid down her Cosmopolitan magazine, open at fashions, loose flowing shirts in jewel colours.

▪ I went into my parents' room and lay down on the bed.

▪ It is the sort of knowledge that may be laid down in rules and can be learned from books.

▪ There is no requirement that harm be sustained before the law may intervene to lay down moral standards.

off

▪ It is also laying off 230 of its 750 Coventry staff.

▪ Out of the last 15, three have been laid off because of more senior teachers taking their place.

▪ Certainly, an emergency on the first flight after a long lay off provides the potential for an incident.

▪ But there was a budget cut after a year, and I was laid off.

▪ The prescription is expected: lay off the climbing and get stuck into physiotherapy.

▪ The disenchantment affects all workers, even before they are ever laid off.

▪ Drunks would be laid off immediately, and could only return when sober.

▪ Dan Reynolds, a self-confident engineer with twenty years' experience with large companies, was laid off in 1992.

out

▪ Uncle Philip was laid out on a charcoal grill like a barbecued pork chop.

▪ Now he was laying out a polo field next to the house.

▪ The table of transition probabilities for the travel example would be laid out as shown in Table 6.2.

▪ Even the plastic gloves next to the tray were laid out carefully, as if the fingers were still in them.

▪ I lay out the old chipped Spode cups and saucers.

▪ The logic was good, the ingredients were laid out correctly - from them he should be able to recognise the receipt.

▪ To get it laid out in the most effective way.

■ NOUN

blame

▪ Whatever its cause, that decline makes it harder to lay blame for any recent severe weather on El Chichón.

▪ These stories choose to measure the price of things rather than to lay blame.

▪ Margolin lays the blame above all on Mao's ideological fanaticism.

▪ And when the results come back, Piccirillo avoids laying blame.

▪ It's difficult to know exactly where to lay the blame.

▪ The inquest laid no blame, and no one has ever been charged in connection with the case.

▪ It could have been switched around by anyone, hoping to lay the blame elsewhere.

carpet

▪ It had been shattered along with the glass tank, the debris of which lay scattered on the carpet.

▪ During the week I found work in town painting houses, laying carpets and delivering telephone books.

▪ Under a wooden veranda lay a spread of carpets and divans.

▪ We want to lay a plain carpet in our lounge, but we're not sure which way the pile should go.

▪ It was April, and a lozenge of sunlight lay across his carpet.

▪ The small grey and red-edged squares of the pamphlet and Time lay on the pale carpet of needles.

▪ We'd laid down on the carpet and the minute I'd put it in her I'd come.

▪ Along the narrow landing at Mrs Parvis's were laid pieces of carpet to cover the cracks in the lino.

claim

▪ No particular religion can ever embody the perfection of Religion or lay claim to a monopoly of Truth.

▪ You know, Earl, I never laid no claim for Beatrice.

▪ Mill's most famous innovation lay in his claim that quality of pleasure counts as well as quantity.

▪ Shoveling is considered so nasty that the tortured feel they must reward themselves by laying permanent claim to their handiwork.

▪ Do you mean that only Nobel laureates and their peers can lay claim to the hallowed occupation of research?

▪ Ray McGovern and the other protestors at the 9: 15 liturgy were laying claim to this legacy of principled dissent.

egg

▪ Look for a butterfly laying its eggs.

▪ They lay their eggs in midwinter, incubating their eggs and chicks through many blizzards.

▪ Within an hour or so of reaching the pond and becoming clasped in amplexus, females start to lay their eggs.

▪ A female toad may lay 20,000 eggs each season; perhaps a quarter of a million in her lifetime.

▪ On his way out, Jack stole the goose that laid the golden eggs.

▪ There is one other bizarre adaptation used by the female cuckoo in laying her eggs.

▪ An ugly duckling, like a printing press, was transformed into a well-behaved goose laying golden eggs.

emphasis

▪ The Labour government laid its emphasis upon local authority housing rather than on private building for sale.

▪ They laid little emphasis on the message of the prophets.

▪ They laid great emphasis on the value of a high level of participation by members of the lesbian and gay communities.

▪ Also, different kinds of organizations lay the emphasis on different views.

▪ Dobry laid great emphasis on consultations and meetings between applicants and the local planning authority, particularly in relation to Class B applications.

▪ Lord Watson laid the same emphasis in his speech, at p. 212.

▪ This view was so widely attractive that Themistokles himself was constrained to lay more emphasis on a nearer enemy, Aigina.

floor

▪ This time the front door was open and a swathe of sunlight lay across the red-tiled floor.

▪ A fat young man lay spread-eagled on the floor.

▪ I hobbled upstairs and lay on the floor to get my shorts off.

▪ Her skirt and top lay puddled on the floor where she had taken them off.

▪ She walked into the room, glancing only briefly at the shot CI5 man, who lay unconscious on the floor.

▪ I lay on the floor in the pale gauze of winter twilight, recalling all the Great Women of the Telephone.

▪ His binoculars lay abandoned on the floor.

▪ To examine the work, viewers must decide whether to tread on a flag laid neatly on the floor before it.

foundation

▪ But in Britain we have laid the foundations for recovery.

▪ Mr Knospe laid the foundation stone and drank his share of champagne at a party in his honor.

▪ The drama school training will only lay the foundations and prepare you for the profession you are joining.

▪ And in order to clarify his position he once more dives back into laying philosophical foundations.

▪ He laid some of the foundations of the Newtonian mechanics that was to replace Aristotle's.

▪ We are laying the foundations for further progress.

▪ In fact, I laid the foundation stone on his behalf on 29 March 1996.

groundwork

▪ What he is doing is laying the groundwork for the decisive moment and preparing his getaway.

▪ Commission officials, however, appeared to be laying the political groundwork to exclude Perot from upcoming debates.

▪ The project is intended to lay the groundwork for a subsequent full-scale study.

▪ They decided among themselves they needed to lay the groundwork.

▪ Fox is clearly laying the groundwork for peace talks to restart.

▪ It is a transitory work which lays the groundwork for themes and styles found in the theater sixty years later.

▪ Then the elite persuaded the newly elected mayor to appoint a committee to lay the groundwork for redevelopment.

▪ Their task, simply put, was to lay the scientific groundwork for the manned landing missions that were then being planned.

plan

▪ We therefore laid our plans and moved out in good order over a long period of time.

▪ We immediately began laying plans for subsequent operations to achieve what we had been unable to accomplish at Pearl Harbor.

▪ The two countries were laying plans for a jointly operated early-warning centre that might help this.

▪ We consult an architect, laying our current floor plan before her and describing our needs.

▪ Taking care to avoid certain members of his household ... So the rational mind lays its rational plans.

▪ Undaunted, Galvin laid out a ten-year plan to make Motorola the leader in the industry.

▪ Meanwhile, the moment there was a hint of spring in the air, she began to lay her plans.

▪ We then laid plans for the next voyage.

stress

▪ New legislation lays particular stress on appropriate assessment.

▪ Here we might look at the question why Gandhi should lay so much stress on the interrelation of Truth and ahi.

▪ In addition to the need for humility, discipline and singleminded devotion in the quest for Truth Gandhi lays stress on prayer.

▪ The Government are laying great stress on the possibility of a consumer-led recovery.

▪ She said that her interview had laid stress on personal circumstances rather than experience and qualifications.

▪ He lays particular stress on two consequences of this analysis, both of which are presented as advantages of Marx's theory.

▪ In the matter of ultimate aesthetic evaluation it laid stress on the intuitive response of the general public.

▪ Historically, she has laid much greater stress than her continental neighbours on sophisticated external examinations at the end of compulsory schooling.

table

▪ Facing the audience he lay back on the table, screaming and moaning, as if he were going into labor.

▪ All these notions are laid on the table and dissected one-by-one with razor sharp perception and humor.

▪ Then I hear Gary returning and I go down to lay the table.

▪ The gun lay on the table.

▪ She moved up the stairs past the few skins that lay on a table and made her way into the office.

▪ My gun lay on a small table.

▪ In the kitchen Anne and Millie are laying the table for dinner, talking seriously.

wreath

▪ He had gone there to lay a wreath on every visit since.

▪ Clinton laid a wreath of red and white roses before a majestic memorial at Piskaryevskoye Cemetery.

▪ He was speaking after laying a wreath on the spot where the protestors died.

▪ David C.. Bolles, eldest son of Don Bolles, helped her lay a wreath at the foot of the monument.

▪ Charles, who laid wreaths in Hong Kong yesterday, played polo on her birthday in July.

▪ Take Chancellor Adenauer, in 1970, at the site of the former Warsaw ghetto, laying a wreath.

▪ This year, and for years to come, they will walk hand-in-hand to lay a wreath at Suzanne's grave.

PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES

kill the goose that lays the golden egg

▪ High taxes kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

lay a guilt trip on sb

lay an egg

▪ The first episode of the series laid an egg.

▪ A few species laid eggs beneath mounds of rotten vegetation that warmed as it decayed.

▪ Adults grow to varying sizes, depending on food available, and lay eggs in late summer.

▪ Female brush turkeys visit the males' mounds, lay eggs in them, and depart.

▪ Gravid female fig wasps enter figs, lay eggs and die.

▪ In turn the later reptiles could diversify on land when they could lay eggs away from a watery environment.

▪ The wasp lays eggs inside the eggs laid by the whitefly, thereby destroying the whitefly eggs.

▪ These mate, fly away and the females find new plants to lay eggs on.

▪ Within it, they copulate and lay eggs.

lay it on with a trowel

lay sb to rest

▪ At nightfall she was tired and lay down to rest.

▪ Rather it attempted to lay the movement to rest.

▪ She took the pills and lay down to rest with her eyes closed.

▪ Then she lay down to rest in the lounge, surrounded by other women who even here never stopped talking.

▪ We can't even lay him to rest.

▪ Without proof I should really lay the idea to rest.

lay siege to sb/sth

▪ After his victory Edward rallied his troops and marched north to lay siege to Calais.

▪ Almost ten years had passed since they had first laid siege to the town, and it seemed as strong as ever.

▪ He laid siege to the fortress and gradually weakened it to the point of collapse.

▪ In 476 they laid siege to Eion, which guarded the Strymon bridge.

▪ In June 1176 Richard laid siege to Limoges; after a few days resistance Aimar's citadel capitulated.

▪ In less than two generations, since the Second World War, they have laid siege to the academic world.

▪ She had laid siege to the typists' room for some minutes before Marshall had persuaded her downstairs.

lay sth bare

▪ The depth of the problem is laid bare in the fact that 40% of 18- to 25- year-olds are unemployed.

▪ The excavation laid bare the streets of the ancient city.

lay your hands on sth

▪ Government reports, social legislation, anything she could lay her hands on that would better acquaint her with her work.

▪ He will sell anything he can lay his hands on in exchange for drugs, which includes any information he may have.

▪ I know exactly where to lay my hands on them.

▪ I like writing letters and reading anything I can lay my hands on!

▪ Kabari women use whatever birth control technology they can lay their hands on.

▪ Looters carried clothes out of shop windows along with anything else they could lay their hands on.

▪ Monday I felt driven to eat everything I could lay my hands on.

▪ Some one had to overturn the present political arrangements in the Limousin if he was ever to lay his hands on Hautefort.

lay/provide the foundation(s) for sth

▪ Tests on healthy people may lay the foundation for a vaccine to prevent AIDS.

▪ I think you have to lay the foundation for your success in terms of defense and rebounding.

▪ It laid the foundation for an organisation with greater appeal to the deaf themselves, particularly the young.

▪ These arguments provide the foundation for Simmel's account of the contradictory nature of modern life.

▪ This theory also laid the foundation for the modern revolution in our understanding of the deepest parts of the earth.

▪ To generate fundamental knowledge that can lay the foundation for future advances in high-performance computing and communications.

▪ We could say that she is laying the foundations for dressing herself later on.

▪ What is stressed rather is that the same phenomenon provides the foundation for both historical tendencies.

▪ While incomplete, the steps that were taken laid the foundation for Workplace 2000.

lay/put sth to rest

▪ Many of the public's doubts have now been laid to rest.

▪ A second glance put my mind to rest, but for a moment there it gave me a turn.

▪ I think this definitely puts it to rest.

▪ Kwasniewski has said he may dissolve parliament to put the issue to rest and call for new elections.

▪ Rather it attempted to lay the movement to rest.

▪ She took the pills and lay down to rest with her eyes closed.

▪ The time has come to put this to rest.

▪ Then she lay down to rest in the lounge, surrounded by other women who even here never stopped talking.

▪ Without proof I should really lay the idea to rest.

new-made/new-formed/new-laid etc

not lay a finger on sb

put/lay your cards on the table

▪ If they're willing to put all their cards on the table and negotiate, that's good.

▪ If we want to reach an agreement, we'll have to lay all our cards on the table.

▪ They're willing to put all their cards on the table and negotiate.

▪ Come on, you can lay your cards on the table in this house.

▪ The new rules appear to encourage parties to lay their cards on the table and facilitate early settlements.

put/lay/set down a marker

set/lay/clap eyes on sb/sth

▪ Bedford disliked Halsey the minute he set eyes on him.

▪ How could she possibly know, since he had not set eyes on the girl?

▪ I bonded on the second night I laid eyes on Hyakutake.

▪ Just hours earlier she had set eyes on the pretty two-year-old and sister Anna-Camilla, seven, for the first time.

▪ Never anywhere have I set eyes on such a one.

▪ No sooner did she set eyes on the gentleman than she recognised his pecuniary position to be merely temporary.

▪ The couple fell in love before they had even set eyes on each other during a six-month long distance courtship.

EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES

▪ Before you start packing, lay out all the clothes on the bed.

▪ Farley laid the gun down and surrendered.

▪ Moyers laid his case before the public.

▪ She laid $10 on the favorite, Golden Boy.

▪ She unfolded the map and laid it on the table.

▪ Turtles lay their eggs on the beach at night.

EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS

▪ He laid the money on the table as they walked out to the stoop.

▪ He lay down against a wall.

▪ He was laid down on brittle pampas grass and then manhandled by the creatures.

▪ Hey, I told him to lay off of me in practice.

▪ It does little more than lay a foundation of principles.

▪ It was as if a fall lay within her that she wasn't able to make.

▪ She lay against the pillows, her whole body numb.

▪ There had been long weeks when he lay sunk in gloom and introspection.

II.verb

COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS

■ ADVERB

ahead

▪ These early months gave him a brutally clear idea of what lay ahead.

▪ Although generally optimistic, Dan knew that more challenges lay ahead.

▪ Dark pines and yellow birches lay ahead, as the shoreline curved to meet me.

▪ And almost alone among the early Hmong arrivals, he could see that storm signals lay ahead.

▪ Already she was terrified of what lay ahead.

▪ It had been a good spring for the President, but trouble lay ahead.

▪ But that life was over now and a new one lay ahead.

▪ But no one was better equipped for the psychological warfare that lay ahead.

■ NOUN

floor

▪ For half an hour she lay on the floor in pain before they finally left with a hoard of silverware.

▪ We consult an architect, laying our current floor plan before her and describing our needs.

▪ Changez lay writhing on the floor, unable to get up.

▪ A fat young man lay spread-eagled on the floor.

▪ A heavy iron bar lay on the floor beside my left hand.

▪ I followed him to a room in which bundles of magazines lay strewn on the floor.

▪ Breakfast was laid on the floor at the near end of the room.

▪ Dashed hopes lay all over the floor.