Word.ws English Dictionary

laying low

laying low is the present participle and gerund of lay low.

Meaning of lay low

Verb (1)

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

  1. (transitive) To topple or overcome; to cause to fall; (of a person) to knock out.
    • He was laid low by a vicious blow to the head.
  2. (transitive) To put in an abject condition.
    • My lover had remained in New York with her family because she had picked up the plague, or something just as bad, that had laid her quite low.1979 April 28, Nancy Walker, “A Case of Mistaken Identity”, in Gay Community News, page 19

Verb (2)

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

  1. (informal, proscribed, sometimes) To lie low, to be inconspicuous, especially when the potential object of search.
    • We lay low until the shell went over and then would straighten up again.1904, A Committee of the Survivors, History of the Twelfth Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteers, in The Civil War, page 219

Questions about laying low

What is laying low the present participle and gerund of?
Laying low is the present participle and gerund of lay low.

Words near laying low in the dictionary

  1. laying in ashes
  2. laying in lavender
  3. laying into
  4. laying it on
  5. laying it on thick
  6. laying low
  7. laying odds
  8. laying off
  9. laying on
  10. laying on of hands
  11. laying on the line

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laying low (page history and authors); lay low (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: “laying low.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/laying_low. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.