Word.ws English Dictionary

lain

/leɪn/

lain is the past participle of lie.

lain is the past participle of lay.

Meaning of lie

Verb

lie (third-person singular simple present lies, present participle lying, simple past lay or (colloquial) laid, past participle lain or (colloquial) laid or (obsolete) lien)

  1. (intransitive) To rest in a horizontal position on a surface.
    • The book lies on the table; the snow lies on the roof; he lies in his coffin.
  2. (intransitive) To be placed or situated.
    • Ying-yang county lies 70 li southwest of the modern Teng-feng county, Honan.1988, Robin D. S. Yates, “Selected Translations”, in Washing Silk: The Life and Selected Poetry of Wei Chuang (834?-910), Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 100
  3. (copulative, intransitive) To abide; to remain for a longer or shorter time; to be in a certain state or condition.
    • to lie waste; to lie fallow; to lie open; to lie hidden; to lie grieving; to lie under one's displeasure; to lie at the mercy of the waves
  4. Used with in: to be or exist; to belong or pertain; to have an abiding place; to consist.
    • Envy lies between beings equal in nature, though unequal in circumstances.c. 1690, Jeremy Collier, Of Envy
  5. Used with with: to have sexual relations with.
    • And it came to passe after these things, that his masters wife cast her eyes vpon Ioseph, and shee said, Lie with me.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 39:7
  6. Used with on/upon: to be incumbent (on); to be the responsibility of a person.

See all 22 meanings of lie

Meaning of lay

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To place down in a position of rest, or in a horizontal position.
    • to lay a book on the table; to lay a body in the grave
  2. (archaic, transitive) To cause to subside or abate.
    • The cloudes, as things affrayd, before him flye; / But all so soone as his outrageous powre / Is layd, they fiercely then begin to shoure […]1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, book II, canto viii, verse xlviii
    Synonyms:
    becalm, settle down
  3. (transitive) To compel a supernatural entity to cease haunting a place, often by ritual or prayer; to exorcise or banish (a spirit or ghost).
    • They were resolved to banish him if they could, and the spirit, who seemed to have an inkling of their design, was often heard singing in a melancholy tone:
      Wae's me! wae's me!
      The acorn is not yet
      Fallen from the tree,
      That's to grow the wood,
      That's to make the cradle,
      That's to rock the...1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 296
  4. (transitive) To prepare (a plan, project etc.); to set out, establish (a law, principle).
    • Even when I lay a long plan, it is never in the expectation that I will live to see it fulfilled.2006, Clive James, North Face of Soho, Picador, published 2007, page 48
  5. (transitive) To install certain building materials, laying one thing on top of another.
    • lay brick; lay flooring
  6. (transitive) To produce and deposit (an egg or eggs).
    • The hen laid an egg.

See all 45 meanings of lay

Verb

lain (third-person singular simple present lains, present participle laining, simple past and past participle lained)

  1. (obsolete) To conceal, keep quiet about.
    • Also broder sir Agrauayne and sir mordred in lyke wyse sir Launcelot rescowed yow bothe and thre score and two from sir Turquyn / Me thynketh broder suche kynde dedes and kyndenes shold be remembryd / doo as ye lyst sayd syr Agrauayne for I wylle layne it no lenger1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “j”, in Le Morte Darthur, book XX

Proper noun capitalized: Lain

Lain (plural Lains)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of lain

Forms of lain

Verb
third-person singular presentlains
present participlelaining
past participlelained
pastlained
alternative formlean
alternative formlen
Proper noun
pluralLains

Origin of lain

Inflected forms.

From Middle English lainen, leynen, from Old Norse leyna (“to conceal”) and Old English līeġnan (“to deny; conceal”); both from Proto-Germanic *laugnijaną, from Proto-Germanic *laugnō (“secrecy”).

Phrases with lain

23 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with lain

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lain

What does lain mean?
Lain means to conceal, keep quiet about.
What is lain the past participle of?
Lain is the past participle of lie.
What part of speech is lain?
Lain can be a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lain?
Lain is pronounced /leɪn/.
What is the past tense of lain?
The past tense of lain is lained.

Words near lain in the dictionary

  1. Laila
  2. Lailah
  3. Lails
  4. laimosphere
  5. laimospheres
  6. lain
  7. lain above
  8. lain ahead
  9. lain along
  10. lain around
  11. lain at someone's door

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lain (page history and authors); Lain (page history and authors); lie (page history and authors); 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-lain.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.