Word.ws English Dictionary

lay-up

lay-up is the alternative form of layup.

Meaning of layup

Noun

layup (plural layups)

  1. A close-range shot in which the shooter banks the ball off the backboard from a few feet away.
    • Rockledge's Shanikqua Smith goes for a layup during Tuesday's game against Titusville.2014 November 19, “Gallery: Titusville vs. Rockledge girls basketball”, in Florida Today, archived from the original on 19 Dec 2025
  2. (colloquial) A relatively easy task.
    • Meeting the numbers will be a layup, if not a slam dunk.
  3. The state of being laid up.
    • The ship endured an interminable layup in the harbor lasting nearly a month.
  4. (countable, uncountable) A track used to store train cars.
    • The caboose, long decrepit, rested on a forgotten layup just north of the dry riverbed.
    1. (broadly, countable, slang, uncountable) A side track, tunnel, or elevated structure where idle trains park during off-peak hours, overnight, or on weekend; a targeted spot because the stationary trains give them enough time to paint large pieces.
  5. A train car sitting in storage (laid up), often overnight.
    • Though I knew we shouldn't be there, she pulled me out of the tunnel and into the dark layup, its floors still grubby from the morning commute many hours ago.

See all 7 meanings of layup

Forms of lay-up

plurallay-ups

Questions about lay-up

What is lay-up the alternative form of?
Lay-up is the alternative form of layup.

Words near lay-up in the dictionary

  1. lay-ins
  2. lay-off
  3. lay-offs
  4. lay-out
  5. lay-outs
  6. lay-up
  7. lay-ups
  8. laya
  9. layabout
  10. layabouts
  11. Layac

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay-up (page history and authors); layup (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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Cite this entry: “lay-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lay-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.