Word.ws English Dictionary

laying waste

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

Meaning of lay waste

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To completely destroy, especially of a geographical area or region.
    • When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter III, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 43

Questions about laying waste

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

Words near laying waste in the dictionary

  1. laying to rest
  2. laying tracks
  3. laying up
  4. laying up in lavender
  5. laying up with
  6. laying waste
  7. laying-on of hands
  8. layings
  9. layings on of hands
  10. layings-on of hands
  11. layins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laying waste (page history and authors); lay waste (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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