Word.ws English Dictionary

lay siege

lay siege verb: chiefly followed by against or to: to engage in a siege; to besiege.

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) Chiefly followed by against or to: to engage in a siege; to besiege.
    • And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 4:2
    • In 1574, the duke of Alva laid siege to Leiden to gain control of Holland's most beautiful and prosperous city. To relieve the siege, William of Orange and his followers opened the city's protective dikes to flush out—literally—the surrounding Spanish forces.1994, John H. Makin, Norman J. Ornstein, Debt and Taxes: How America Got into Its Budget Mess and What We Can Do about It, New York, NY: Times Books, →ISBN, page 52
  2. (figuratively, intransitive) To attack continually over a long period.
    • They’re laying siege to all we hold dear.
    • The Reds laid siege to the Albion goal throughout, with Jordan Henderson striking the underside of the bar and Dirk Kuyt the inside of the post.2012 April 22, Sam Sheringham, “Liverpool 0-1 West Brom”, in BBC Sport

Forms of lay siege

third-person singular presentlays siege
present participlelaying siege
past participlelaid siege
pastlaid siege

Questions about lay siege

What does lay siege mean?
Lay siege means chiefly followed by against or to: to engage in a siege; to besiege.
What part of speech is lay siege?
Lay siege is a verb.
What is the past tense of lay siege?
The past tense of lay siege is laid siege.

Words near lay siege in the dictionary

  1. lay rector
  2. lay rectors
  3. lay rough
  4. lay rubber
  5. lay salt on someone's tail
  6. lay siege
  7. lay some skin on
  8. lay something at the door of
  9. lay something at the feet of
  10. lay speaker
  11. lay speakers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay siege (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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