Lay

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /leɪ/

Definitions

1. To put something down gently in a particular place ; to produce eggs as a bird or animal does ; describing a person who is a non-ordained member of the church
2. To set or place an object carefully where it belongs ; to deposit eggs in a nest or area ; relating to individuals not officially ordained for religious service
3. The act of placing or positioning items somewhere ; to generate eggs biologically ; pertaining to church members who are not clergy

Etymology: The verb "lay" is one of English's most tangled sets of words, because it is the causative partner of "lie." Old English had "licgan" (to lie down) and "lecgan" (to cause to lie), and the causative sense of "lay" descends from a Germanic verb built on the same kind of causative pattern. Its nearest relatives are all over northern Europe: German "legen," Dutch "leggen," Swedish "lägga," and Icelandic "leggja" all mean "to lay," and the Gothic "lagjan" shows the root reaching back to the earliest recorded Germanic. The egg sense is the one that surprises most people. Hens "lay" because placing an egg is, in effect, laying it down, and the verb's sense of putting something carefully in position covers that act neatly. The church sense, where "lay" means non-clergy members, comes from the older noun "lay," meaning people outside holy orders, a separate word with its own history in medieval Latin and French.

Synonyms: place, put, set

Antonyms: raise, lift