Word.ws English Dictionary

lay upon

lay upon is the simple past of lie upon.

Meaning of lie upon

Verb

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

  1. (archaic) To be incumbent upon; to be up to (someone); to be obligatory upon.
    • It lies upon the prosecution to prove that the defendant is guilty.
  2. To lie on.
    • She was lying upon the bed.
  3. (obsolete) To importune; to urge; to solicit.
    • The judge in the parable granted the widow's suit merely because she lay upon him, and was troublesome to him.

Questions about lay upon

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

Words near lay upon in the dictionary

  1. lay to rest
  2. lay tracks
  3. lay up
  4. lay up in lavender
  5. lay up with
  6. lay upon
  7. lay vicar
  8. lay vicars
  9. lay waste
  10. lay with
  11. lay-brethren

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lay upon (page history and authors); lie upon (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 upon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lay_upon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.