Word.ws English Dictionary

lays waste

lays waste is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 lays waste

What is lays waste the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Lays waste is the third-person singular simple present indicative of lay waste.

Words near lays waste in the dictionary

  1. lays to rest
  2. lays tracks
  3. lays up
  4. lays up in lavender
  5. lays up with
  6. lays waste
  7. Laysan
  8. Laysan albatross
  9. Laysan albatrosses
  10. Laysan crake
  11. Laysan crakes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lays 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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