Word.ws English Dictionary

lay doggo

lay doggo is the simple past of lie doggo.

Meaning of lie doggo

Verb

lie doggo (third-person singular simple present lies doggo, present participle lying doggo, simple past lay doggo, past participle lain doggo)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To lie quiet and still in order to avoid detection; also (by extension), to stay hidden by being discreet and not drawing attention; to keep a low profile, to lie low.
    • I used to send out spies, and act on their information. As soon as a man came in and told me of a gang in hiding, I'd take thirty men with some grub, and go out and look for them, while the other subaltern lay doggo in camp.1893, Rudyard Kipling, “A Conference of the Powers”, in Many Inventions, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 29
    Synonyms:
    play doggo

Questions about lay doggo

What is lay doggo the simple past of?
Lay doggo is the simple past of lie doggo.

Words near lay doggo in the dictionary

  1. lay claim
  2. lay clerk
  3. lay clerks
  4. lay day
  5. lay days
  6. lay doggo
  7. lay down
  8. lay down arms
  9. lay down on
  10. lay down on the job
  11. lay down one's arms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay doggo (page history and authors); lie doggo (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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