Word.ws English Dictionary

laid waste

laid waste is the simple past and past participle of lay waste.

Meaning of lay waste

Verb

lay waste (third-person singular simple present lays waste, present participle laying waste, simple past and past participle laid waste)

  1. (transitive) To completely destroy, especially of a geographical area or region.
    • When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter III, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 43

Questions about laid waste

What is laid waste the simple past and past participle of?
Laid waste is the simple past and past participle of lay waste.

Words near laid waste in the dictionary

  1. laid to rest
  2. laid tracks
  3. laid up
  4. laid up in lavender
  5. laid up with
  6. laid waste
  7. laid-back
  8. laid-off
  9. laidback
  10. laidbackness
  11. laide

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laid waste (page history and authors); lay waste (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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