Word.ws English Dictionary

lay in wait

lay in wait is the simple past of lie in wait.

Meaning of lie in wait

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To be hiding, waiting to ambush or attack someone, or simply to accost them unexpectedly.
    • Nothing impressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good-humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as little as...1846, Charles Dickens, “Genoa and Its Neighbourhood”, in Pictures from Italy, London: […] Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, page 67
    Synonyms:
    waylay

Questions about lay in wait

What is lay in wait the simple past of?
Lay in wait is the simple past of lie in wait.

Words near lay in wait in the dictionary

  1. lay in one's throat
  2. lay in repose
  3. lay in state
  4. lay in the bed one had made
  5. lay in the way
  6. lay in wait
  7. lay into
  8. lay investiture
  9. lay investitures
  10. lay it on
  11. lay it on thick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay in wait (page history and authors); lie in wait (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.

Last updated:

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