Word Finder - lays

definition

Arrangement or relationship; layout.

example

the lay of the land

definition

A share of the profits in a business.

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A lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance.

definition

The direction a rope is twisted.

example

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

definition

A casual sexual partner.

example

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

definition

An act of sexual intercourse.

definition

A plan; a scheme.

definition

(uncountable) the laying of eggs.

example

The hens are off the lay at present.

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A layer.

definition

To place down in a position of rest, or in a horizontal position.

example

A shower of rain lays the dust.

definition

To cause to subside or abate.

synonyms

• becalm
• settle down

definition

To prepare (a plan, project etc.); to set out, establish (a law, principle).

definition

To install certain building materials, laying one thing on top of another.

example

lay brick;  lay flooring

definition

To produce and deposit an egg.

example

Did dinosaurs lay their eggs in a nest?

definition

To bet (that something is or is not the case).

example

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

definition

To deposit (a stake) as a wager; to stake; to risk.

definition

To have sex with.

synonyms

• lie by
• lie with
• sleep with

definition

To take a position; to come or go.

example

to lay forward;  to lay aloft

definition

To state; to allege.

example

to lay the venue

definition

To point; to aim.

example

to lay a gun

definition

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

example

to lay a cable or rope

definition

To place and arrange (pages) for a form upon the imposing stone.

definition

To place (new type) properly in the cases.

definition

To apply; to put.

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

example

to lay a tax on land

definition

To impute; to charge; to allege.

synonyms

• ascribe
• attribute

definition

To present or offer.

example

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

definition

A lake.

definition

A ballad or sung poem; a short poem or narrative, usually intended to be sung.

example

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

definition

A meadow; a lea.

definition

A law.

definition

An obligation; a vow.

definition

To don or put on (tefillin (phylacteries)).

The quail lays fifteen or twenty eggs and they are white.

The foundress of the nest lays eggs and at first feeds and rears the larvae, the earliest of which develop into workers.

The conductors are then twisted in pairs with definite lays.

The mother bird lays her eggs in a nest and keeps them warm until the birdlings are hatched.

If any one of you lays a hand on her, you'll be answering to me.

Sailors capture the bird for its long wing-bones, which they manufacture into tobacco-pipe stems. The albatross lays one egg; it is white, with a few spots, and is about 4 in.

Although the former of these lays stress upon the fact that the sheriff's supervisory powers are universal many men did not attend his tourn.

The hen-bird commonly lays three clay-coloured eggs, blotched with black, in a very slight hollow on the ground not far from the sea.

If by a two-thirds majority the action of a minister be arraigned, the president of the Imperial Council lays the case before the emperor, who decides.

The model " form of regulation " lays down the scales of the drawings and the information to be shown thereon.

In this he lays it down as a rule that it is bad husbandry to take two crops of grain successively, which marks a considerable progress in the knowledge of modern husbandry; though he adds that in Scotland the best husbandmen after a fallow take a crop of wheat; after the wheat, peas; then barley, and then oats; and after that they fallow again.

The female lays her eggs in a slit made by means of her "saw-like" ovipositor in the leaf or fruit of a tree.

It lays down principles for the investigation of the Rabbinic exegesis (Midrash, q.v.) and of the prayer-book of the synagogue.

When the sheet is printed and the platen falls back to the horizontal the operator removes it with one hand and with the other lays on a fresh sheet.

But though Plato holds this inseparable connexion of best and pleasantest to be true and important, it is only for the sake of the vulgar that he lays this stress on pleasure.

But he has not failed to observe that practical reasonings are not commonly of this kind, but are rather concerned with actions as means to ulterior ends; indeed, he lays stress on this as a characteristic of the " political " life, when he wishes to prove its inferiority to the life of pure speculation.

Shaftesbury had conclusively shown that these were not in the vulgar sense selfish; but the very stress which he lays on the pleasure inseparable from their exercise suggests a subtle egoistic theory which he does not expressly exclude, since it may be said that this " intrinsic reward " constitutes the real motive of the benevolent man.

Stewart lays stress on the obligation of justice as distinct from benevolence; but his definition of justice represents it as essentially impartiality, - a virtue which (as was just now said of Reid's fourth principle) must equally find a place in the utilitarian or any other system that lays down universally applicable rules of morality.

In this department he lays down the moral axiom " that the labourer is entitled to the fruit of his own labour " as the principle on which complete rights of property are founded; maintaining that occupancy alone would only confer a transient right of possession during use.

To meet the obvious objections to this method, based on the immediate happiness caused by admitted crimes (such as " knocking a rich villain on the head "), he lays stress on the necessity of general rules in any kind of legislation;' while, by urging the importance of forming and maintaining good habits, he partly evades the difficulty of calculating the consequences of particular actions.

There are also fragments of poems in Half's Saga, Asmund KappaBana's Saga, in the Latin verses of Saxo, and the Shield Lays (Ragnarsdrapa) by Bragi, &c., of this school, which closes with the Sun-Song, a powerful Christian Dantesque poem, recalling some of the early compositions of the Irish Church, and with the 12th-century Lay of Ragnar, Lay of Starkad, The Proverb Song (Havamal) and Krakumal, to which we may add those singular Gloss-poems, the Pulur, which also belong to the Western Isles.

To Greenland, Iceland's farthest colony, founded in the 10th century, we owe the two Lays of Atli, and probably HymiskviOa, which, though of a weirder, harsher cast, yet belong to the Western Isles school and not to Iceland.

These ideas are further developed in various papers in the Bulletin and in his L'Anthropometrie, ou mesure des differentes facultes de l'homme (18'ji), in which he lays great stress on the universal applicability of the binomial law, - according to which the number of cases in which, for instance, a certain height occurs among a large number of individuals is represented by an ordinate of a curve (the binomial) symmetrically situated with regard to the ordinate representing the mean result (average height).

Notwithstanding its defects, Froude's History is a great achievement; it presents an important and powerful account of the Reformation period in England, and lays before us a picture of the past magnificently conceived, and painted in colours which will never lose their freshness and beauty.

The female lays two kinds of eggs - " summer-eggs," which develop without fertilization, and " winter-eggs" or resting eggs, which require to be fertilized.

Ignatius himself lays down the rule that an inferior is bound to make all necessary representations to his superior so as to guide him in imposing a precept of obedience.

His popularity was probably due to the fact that in his sermons he lays little stress on dogmatic questions, but treats generally of moral subjects, in which the secrets of the human heart and the processes of man's reason are described with poetical feeling.

The great river receives an abundant load of silt from its tributaries, and takes up ano lays down silt from its own bed and banks with every change of velocity.

He lays stress on the relation of the supposed confession of faith of Constantine, embodied in the forgery, to that issued by the emperor Constantine V., pointing out the efforts made by the Byzantines between 756 and the synod of Gentilly in 767 to detach Pippin from the cause of Rome and the holy images.

The sexes almost immediately couple; the female in from four to six days lays her eggs, numbering 500 and upwards; and, with that the life cycle of the moth being complete, both sexes soon die.

Hence Rothe, unlike Schleiermacher, lays great stress, for instance, on the personality of God, on the reality of the worlds of good and evil spirits, and on the visible second coming of Christ.

The act of 1849 also forbids bulland bearbaiting, or fighting between any kinds of animals; requires the provision of food and water to animals impounded; lays down regulations as to the treatment of animals sent for slaughter, and imposes a penalty for improperly conveying animals.

The dull treatise of John of Ireland (q.v.) lays claim to originality of a kind.

He lays special stress on the point that abstract ideas when held in their abstraction are almost interchangeable with their opposites - that extremes meet, and that in every true and concrete idea there is a coincidence of opposites.

Many genera of bees are represented, like most other insects, by ordinary males and females, each female constructing a nest formed of several chambers ("cells") and storing in each chamber a supply of food for the grub to be hatched from the egg that she lays therein.

The female Stelis lays her eggs earlier than the Osmia, and towards the bottom of the food-mass; the egg of the Osmia is laid later, and on the surface of the food.

He lays too much stress upon the "concept," and explains too much by the Hegelian antithesis of subjective and objective.

As to syllogism specifically, Locke in a passage, 8 which has an obviously Cartesian ring, lays down four stages or degrees of reasoning, and points o ut that syllogism serves us in but one of these, and that not the all-important one of finding the intermediate ideas.

The London protocol of 1871, with a view to prevent such abuses, lays down, perhaps a little too broadly, " that it is an essential principle of the law of nations that no power can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting powers, by means of an amicable arrangement."

The female lays an egg in the unripe nut, on the kernel of which the larva subsists till September, when it bores its way through the shell, and enters the earth, to undergo transformation into a chrysalis in the ensuing spring.

Probably the poets of the Homeric school - that which dealt with war and adventure - were the genuine descendants of minstrels whose " lays " or " ballads " were the amusement of the feasts in an earlier heroic age; whereas the Hesiodic compositions were non-lyrical from the first, and were only in verse because that was the universal form of literature.

In this way there arose a conservative school who admitted more or less freely the absorption of pre-existing lays in the formation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and also the existence of considerable interpolations, but assigned the main work of formation to prehistoric times, and to the genius of a great poet.

As the word " interpolation " implies, Hermann did not maintain the hypothesis of a congeries of independent " lays."

The conjectures of Hermann, in which the Wolfian theory found a modified and tentative application, were presently thrown into the shade by the more trenchant method of Lachmann, who (in two papers read to the Berlin Academy in 1837 and 1841) sought to show that the Iliad was made up of sixteen independent " lays," with various enlargements and interpolations, all finally reduced to order by Peisistratus.

A number of separate " lays " might conceivably be arranged and connected by a man of poetical taste in a manner that would satisfy all requirements.

It must be admitted that when tried by this test his " lays " generally fail.

Consequently the type of epic poem which would be produced by an aggregation of shorter lays is not the type which we have in the Iliad.

It may even be admitted that the swift-flowing movement, and the simplicity of thought and style, which we admire in the Iliad are an inheritance from the earlier " lays " - the 104a &v&p&v such as Achilles and Patroclus sang to the lyre in their tent.

But between these lays and Homer we must place the cultivation of epic poetry as an art.2 The pre-Homeric lays doubtless furnished the elements of such a poetry - the alphabet, so to speak, of the art; but they must have been refined and transmuted before they formed poems like the Iliad and Odyssey.

But as early as the 7th century we come upon traces of short lays (the so-called cantilenes) which were in the mouths of all and were sung in chorus.