lay down
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: lays down
form: laying down
form: laid down
form: laid down
Etymology: From Middle English leyen doun, leien doun (“to lay down”), equivalent to lay + down.
Senses: examples: text: The police urged the gunman to lay down his weapon.
text: Lay down your arms.
glosses: To give up, surrender, or yield (e.g. a weapon), usually by placing it on the ground.
examples: text: Two standard types of flat-bottom track were introduced as early as 1949, and some 1,570 miles had been laid down to the end of 1950.
ref: 1951 April, D. S. Barrie, “British Railways: A Survey, 1948-1950”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 225:
text: He also thought nothing of laying down a railway in a war zone. For example, he was one of those behind the Grand Crimean Central Railway, built during the Crimean War [...].
ref: 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Chester (1848)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 57:
glosses: To place on the ground, e.g. a railway on a trackbed.
examples: text: He laid down his brand-new Harley-Davidson to avoid the oncoming bus.
glosses: To intentionally take a fall while riding a motorcycle, in order to prevent a more serious collision.
examples: text: Let's lay down the rules right at the beginning, so we are consistent.
text: You've got to lay down the law with that boy.
text: Well, I lay it down, first, that a book quite unornamented can look actually and positively beautiful, and not merely un-ugly, if it be, so to say, architecturally good, which, by the by, need not add much to its price […]
ref: 1893, William Morris, The Ideal Book:
text: Many of the faults reported in all categories should have been cleared by systematic fault-finding. Once a system of fault-finding has been laid down, staff must be made familiar with it and must follow the correct sequence of diagnosis step by step in the way set out in a fault-finding chart.
ref: 1963 February, “Diesel locomotive faults and their remedies”, in Modern Railways, page 103:
text: To come up with common, honorable, flexible, sensible, creative, meaningful, non-coercive "codes" or expectations of ethical behavior while avoiding laying down hard-line, guilt-inspiring "politically correct" rules and superficial judgements is no small feat.
ref: 1979, Alix Dobkins, Adventures in Women's Music:
text: The law was written in words, and those ideally laid down bright lines for everyone to follow
ref: 2016 February 20, “Obituary: Antonin Scalia: Always right”, in The Economist:
glosses: To specify, institute, enact, assert firmly, state authoritatively, establish or formulate (rules or policies).
glosses: To stock, store (e.g. wine) for the future. See also lay by.
qualifier: African-American Vernacular
glosses: To kill (someone).
glosses: To euthanize an animal.
glosses: To sacrifice, especially in the phrase "to lay down one's life."
examples: text: I feel a bit ill, so I'm going to go lay down for a while.
glosses: To lie down.
topics: nautical
transport
glosses: To draw the lines of a ship's hull at full size, before starting a build.
topics: media
printing
publishing
glosses: To place a sheet in a printing press for printing.
Derived terms: lay down one's arms
lay down one's flag
lay down one's life
lay down one's weapons
lay down the law
lay down the marker