gooseberry lay
gooseberry lay noun: the stealing of linen hanging on a line.
Noun
gooseberry lay (plural gooseberry lays)
- The stealing of linen hanging on a line.
- I soon had some kids in working order, and we done a good business - this was in the winter, and we all vent on the gooseberry lay - that means taking things from clothes lines - and ye see they would talk about it ven dey comes home, so that the landlord could hear 'em sometimes - being only a...1865, Ballou's Monthly Magazine, page 315
- How long have you been off the gooseberry lay, son?, Dashiell Hammett, early manuscript of The Maltese Falcon, quoted in 2020, Study Guide to The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (Influence Publishers)
Forms of gooseberry lay
| plural | gooseberry lays |
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Questions about gooseberry lay
- What does gooseberry lay mean?
- Gooseberry lay means the stealing of linen hanging on a line.
- What part of speech is gooseberry lay?
- Gooseberry lay is a noun.
- What is the plural of gooseberry lay?
- The plural of gooseberry lay is gooseberry lays.
Words near gooseberry lay in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gooseberry lay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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