How to Use lay in a Sentence

lay

1 of 2 noun
Definition of laynext
Synonyms for laynext
  • Get a lay of the land aboard the town’s free gondola, which lifts riders 1,750 feet above the valley floor.
    — Ryan Haase, WSJ, 13 May 2021
  • However, Slovenia took it back with a Dragic lay-up and held onto it for the rest of the game.
    — Dallas News, 3 July 2022
  • Being able to rack up the miles and get a lay of your surroundings is a treat for every runner.
    — Chris Hachey, BGR, 25 June 2021
  • As her 6-month-old lay dying in her arms, Becky Kekula struggled to make sense of how this could be.
    — Jessica Bartlett, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Apr. 2023
  • So number one, get a lay of the land; understand the county, state and local taxes.
    — CBS News, 29 Apr. 2022
  • To give you a better lay of the land, here’s a list of some of the Hollywood Hills' most desirable neighborhoods.
    — Spencer Elliott, Forbes, 12 Aug. 2022
  • But week after week, the 20-year-old lay waiting in frustration.
    — Emily Alpert Reyes, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2023
  • And when a beloved lay volunteer was murdered, the sisters were shaken deeply.
    — Kaya Laterman, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2023
  • Louisville's struggles to convert lay-ups helped cement an six-plus minute field-goal drought early in the contest.
    — Shannon Russell, The Courier-Journal, 11 Mar. 2021
  • For the second time this month a contestant on Wheel of Fortune has missed what seemed like a linguistic lay-up.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 16 Mar. 2022
  • Taze Moore carried this team with 15 points, but his missed lay-up with 30 seconds left was indicative of the shots just not falling.
    — Scott Gleeson, USA TODAY, 27 Mar. 2022
  • This will be the only invitational race run on the 5K course this fall, and several of the top teams are showing up to get a lay of the land.
    — Ethan Fuller, BostonGlobe.com, 7 Oct. 2022
  • But, as always, remember polls come with a margin of error, and in many 2022 elections, there are still too few polls to show a clear lay of the land.
    — Byrick Klein,averi Harper, ABC News, 22 Mar. 2022
  • Only a person with the confidence of a woman who has just had a good lay could attempt and succeed at such a feat.
    — Maggie Fremont, Vulture, 20 July 2021
  • Her teammates continued to feed her inside for easy lay-ups.
    — Matt Cohen, The Indianapolis Star, 17 Nov. 2021
  • Shepherd gives me the lay of the clubland, explaining that there are three unique stages, each with its own sonic identity.
    — Cassidy George, Rolling Stone, 22 Feb. 2023
  • Houk, who had 10 first half points, scored the Eagles’ only basket over final last seven possessions of the half, and the Eagles missed lay-ups on the last three trips up the floor.
    — Wright Wilson, Detroit Free Press, 18 Mar. 2022
  • Monáe did have one glorious opportunity to score as she was left alone next to the basket for what should have been an easy lay-up.
    — Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone, 18 Feb. 2023
  • North Little Rock missed its first seven shot attempts before Madison Hatley hit a lay-up with 4:10 to go in the first quarter.
    — Erick Taylor, Arkansas Online, 11 Mar. 2023
  • Read on for a lay of the land at one of the best national parks in the U.S., including nearby sights worth seeing and pro tips for enjoying all Bryce Canyon has to offer.
    — Maya Silver, Condé Nast Traveler, 9 Mar. 2023
  • The best holes ask the golfer to do this in unique and creative ways, using the natural lay of the land to provide the bones for the strategy and then allowing the architect to provide the flesh in the features.
    — Joe Passov, WSJ, 15 June 2022
  • But that’s not working as a lay viewer who doesn’t have all this historical background.
    — Cori Murray, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Aug. 2023
  • Lee seemed unsure of himself with his first lay and caused a broken down play that was salvaged by their backup big Bismack Biyombo.
    — Dana Scott, The Arizona Republic, 20 Jan. 2023
  • Becciu is the first cardinal to be tried in Vatican City's criminal court by lay judges.
    — Phoebe Natanson, ABC News, 16 Dec. 2023
  • Before using each mop, the testers read its corresponding instruction manual to get a full lay of the land.
    — Rebecca Norris, Peoplemag, 10 Feb. 2023
  • Liddell reached that 1,000-point mark a little more than a minute into the second half by finishing through contact for a lay-up, then finishing off a three-point play at the free-throw line.
    — Stephen Means, cleveland, 28 Jan. 2022
  • Conservatives have every right to be upset that Trump blew an easy lay-up in losing a winnable election to President Biden.
    — Geoff Duncan, CNN, 24 Sep. 2021
  • The use of lay counselors to expand and extend the reach of services has been tried and studied extensively in developing countries.
    — Grace Rubenstein, STAT, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Be sure to include specific lot line dimensions, with boundaries drawn into aerial photographs an excellent way to highlight the lay of your land.
    — Bill Jordan, Dallas News, 27 June 2021
  • It was sponsored by the Catholic Association of Propagandists, a Spanish lay group described as committed to promoting faith in the public square.
    — Elaine Ayala, San Antonio Express-News, 1 Dec. 2021
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lay

2 of 2 adjective
  • The agency says the tests should be easy enough for a lay person to use and interpret at home.
    — Brianna Abbott, WSJ, 14 Dec. 2020
  • The lay Catholic movement practices the Gospel in the way of its late founder, Dorothy Day: a devotion to helping the poor and marginalized.
    — Los Angeles Times, 21 Nov. 2021
  • For the purposes of lay persons, what does a variant mean?
    — Donna M. Owens, Essence, 14 July 2021
  • Kim Connor, a lay leader at the church, has been a member of the congregation for 25 years.
    — Dallas News, 4 Apr. 2021
  • In lay terms, Eric can't move anything from the bottom of his pectoral muscles down.
    — cincinnati.com, 11 Aug. 2022
  • This is suspected by one of the lay sisters in the convent, so Gertrude and Egidio murder the woman and bury her somewhere nearby.
    — Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, 10 Oct. 2022
  • Do, a lay leader and head of the diocese’s Vietnamese committee, fled Vietnam as a teenager in 1975.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 June 2022
  • But for a lay person who's not a lawyer, what are the constraints, in your view, on your upcoming testimony?
    — CBS News, 23 Apr. 2023
  • The story sees Pearce portray a lay preacher who arrives at a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand.
    — Patrick Frater, Variety, 6 May 2022
  • They were replaced by lay staff who expect better pay and benefits.
    — Los Angeles Times, 3 Jan. 2021
  • Bishops are called to their lay role on a temporary basis, typically for around five years.
    — Kim Raff, ProPublica, 2 Dec. 2021
  • Then Thompson Powell decided to go to seminary to become a lay leader at a church.
    — Myrna Petlicki, chicagotribune.com, 24 Aug. 2021
  • In lay terms, what this means is that people who deposited money with Celsius to reap its famously high returns can’t, for the time being, get it out.
    — Steven Zeitchik, Washington Post, 13 June 2022
  • According to the church’s constitution, a lay vote is held to select the top three bishops and then the Holy Synod holds its own secret ballot to elect the new archbishop.
    — Arkansas Online, 25 Dec. 2022
  • For this reason, the new hot trend is 4-wheelers with built in organization, but many of these still go with the lay flat orientation that makes little sense.
    — Larry Olmsted, Forbes, 10 Nov. 2022
  • For the benefit of the lay people in the audience, Ma provided a handy definition of what exactly Web3 is.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 15 Mar. 2023
  • Some of his greatest feats may not even register with lay listeners, even as a vague intimation or emotion.
    — New York Times, 11 Mar. 2021
  • The lay leader of the local congregation confirmed Wednesday that Robertson lived alone within his ward boundaries.
    — Kolbie Peterson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 9 Aug. 2023
  • Who writes especially well about science for a lay audience?
    — New York Times, 9 Mar. 2023
  • More than half of the country’s 27 Jesuit colleges and universities are now run by lay presidents, several of them women.
    — Emily Bobrow, WSJ, 15 July 2022
  • The group, which consists of lay members from a variety of fields, a Catholic pastor and a religious sister, approved Demek’s reinstatement last week.
    — Jonathan M. Pitts, Baltimore Sun, 5 Apr. 2022
  • Sign up Indoor air quality, or IAQ, by contrast, has been overlooked by researchers, policymakers, and the lay public alike.
    — Eleanor Cummins, The New Republic, 19 June 2023
  • The therapist worked as a plot engine, because everyone’s lay idea of therapy is having a problem and addressing it and solving it, which hews really well to the format of a sitcom.
    — The New Yorker, 12 July 2023
  • The authors, a leading group of specialists, have inspired a series of articles in the lay press warning of problems created by taking Paxlovid at the same time as a long list of medications for heart conditions or blood clots.
    — Kent Sepkowitz, CNN, 17 Oct. 2022
  • Shaw delivers the rest of this story as an omniscient narrator, deftly moving from scene to scene and, along the way, helpfully explaining production jargon for a lay audience.
    — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 2 May 2023
  • Published in 1953, the Morgans’ book would be assigned to generations of undergraduate and graduate students and widely read by a lay audience.
    — William Hogeland, The New Republic, 25 Jan. 2021
  • Hardly the people’s favorite and trailing the two frontrunners in the lay vote, Chrysostomos outmaneuvered his rivals by clinching majority support within the college to win.
    — Menelaos Hadjicostis, ajc, 7 Nov. 2022
  • Who writes especially well about philosophy for a lay audience?
    — New York Times, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Conventional wisdom holds that the most enticing way to introduce architecture to a lay audience is through the human element that animates this most social of all art forms.
    — Martin Filler, The New York Review of Books, 11 Feb. 2021
  • In their place, however, were an explosion in lay ministries, from parish administrators to altar girls to extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.
    — David Briggs, cleveland, 21 Sep. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lay.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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