lay out

From lay +‎ out.

This entry needs pronunciation information. If you are familiar with the IPA or enPR then please add some!

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

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

1. (transitive) To expend or contribute money to an expense or purchase.

   Coordinate terms: lay away, lay in, lay up

   She laid out hundreds of dollars to throw a great party.

   • 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid‎^[1], London: T. Passinger, page 63:

     […] you must endeavour to take off your Mistress from all the care you can, giving to her a just and true account of what moneys you lay out for her, shewing your self thrifty in all your disbursements.

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “Government”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):

     There are but two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it out.

2. (transitive) To arrange (physically) in a certain way, so as to spread or space apart; to display (e.g. merchandise or a collection).

   Antonyms: pick up, pack up

   She laid the blocks out in a circle on the floor.

   She laid out a terrific spread for the party.

   • 2023 March 8, Gareth Dennis, “The Reshaping of things to come...”, in RAIL, number 978, page 46:

     Having laid out these big-picture figures, the report then begins its analysis of traffic types against route mileage.

3. (transitive) To explain; to interpret.

   Let me lay it out for you: you're not going to get a better opportunity than this one.

   • 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, 230b:

     Because his opinions are all over the place, they find it easy to scrutinise them and lay them out […]

4. (transitive) To arrange; to design; to concoct; to think up.

   He began to lay out the hull for an inexpensive but fast littoral drone.

   She began to lay out how the circuits would be connected.

   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:

     It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan.

5. To prepare a body for burial.

   They laid him out beautifully on a bier draped in satin.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 28, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out— which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.

   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 6, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

     The family was alone in the parlour with the great polished box. William, when laid out, was six feet four inches long. Like a monument lay the bright brown, ponderous coffin.

6. (transitive, colloquial) To render (someone) unconscious; to knock out; to cause to fall to the floor.

   I laid him out on the sidewalk after he tried to grab me.

7. (transitive, colloquial) To scold or berate.

   She really laid him out for taking the money and then lying to try to cover it up.

8. (intransitive, US, colloquial, proscribed) To lie in the sunshine.

   She laid out for hours just to try to get even bronzer than she already was.

• layout

• outlay