lay out

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To expend or contribute money to an expense or purchase.
   • She laid out hundreds of dollars to throw a great party.
   • […] you must endeavour to take off your Mistress from all the care you can, giving to her a just and true account of what moneys you lay out for her, shewing your self thrifty in all your disbursements.1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, page 63
2. (transitive) To arrange (physically) in a certain way, so as to spread or space apart; to display (e.g. merchandise or a collection).
   • She laid the blocks out in a circle on the floor.
   • She laid out a terrific spread for the party.

   Antonyms:

   pick up, pack up

3. (transitive) To explain; to interpret.
   • Let me lay it out for you: you're not going to get a better opportunity than this one.
   • Because his opinions are all over the place, they find it easy to scrutinise them and lay them out […]2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, 230b
4. (transitive) To arrange; to design; to concoct; to think up.
   • He began to lay out the hull for an inexpensive but fast littoral drone.
   • She began to lay out how the circuits would be connected.
5. To prepare a body for burial.
   • They laid him out beautifully on a bier draped in satin.
   • So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out— which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 28, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
6. (US, colloquial, transitive) To render (someone) unconscious; to knock out; to cause to fall to the floor; to kill.
   • I laid him out on the sidewalk after he tried to grab me.
   • Was it possible that this responsible mill employee had been laid out and doped and was now existing in a mentally inert state by which he became an unconscious tool in the hands of those who had the key to his position?1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London
7. (colloquial, transitive) To scold or berate.
   • She really laid him out for taking the money and then lying to try to cover it up.
8. (colloquial, intransitive, jazz) To cease playing one's instrument.
   • Hey man can you lay out on the bridge?
9. (colloquial, intransitive) To sunbathe.
   • It's been raining so much all week that I haven't had a chance to lay out.