layup

Noun

layup (plural layups)

1. A close-range shot in which the shooter banks the ball off the backboard from a few feet away.
   • Rockledge's Shanikqua Smith goes for a layup during Tuesday's game against Titusville.2014 November 19, “Gallery: Titusville vs. Rockledge girls basketball”, in Florida Today, archived from the original on 19 Dec 2025
2. (colloquial) A relatively easy task.
   • Meeting the numbers will be a layup, if not a slam dunk.
3. The state of being laid up.
   • The ship endured an interminable layup in the harbor lasting nearly a month.
4. (countable, uncountable) A track used to store train cars.
   • The caboose, long decrepit, rested on a forgotten layup just north of the dry riverbed.
   • The City Hall station on the BMT line [...] has a lower level that was never put into service. Yet the platforms have been maintained, are well illuminated, and serve as a layup and storage area for the MTA.2005, Julia Solis, New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City, New York City: Routledge, →ISBN, page 83
   1. (broadly, countable, slang, uncountable) A side track, tunnel, or elevated structure where idle trains park during off-peak hours, overnight, or on weekend; a targeted spot because the stationary trains give them enough time to paint large pieces.
5. A train car sitting in storage (laid up), often overnight.
   • Though I knew we shouldn't be there, she pulled me out of the tunnel and into the dark layup, its floors still grubby from the morning commute many hours ago.
   • A nonmoving empty train, or a layup, was easiest to pin down at night or on weekends when trains would park on the dormant stretches of express tracks.2010, Michele Carlo, Fish Out of Agua: My Life on Neither Side of the (Subway) Tracks, New York City: Citadel Press, →ISBN, page 88
6. (materials science) The process of applying alternate layers of a material and a binding agent to form a composite material.
   • Forgetting to clear the sawdust around his workshop, Payton ended up contaminating the resin-ply matrix with wood particles during his hand layup.
   • In addition to employing flax fibres for polymer-coated sutures, more recently, flax fibres have been proposed for reinforcing polymer composites, such as hand layup laminated scaffolds in tissue engineering.2015, Fong, T. C.; Saba, N.; Liew, C. K.; De Silva, R.; Enamul Hoque, M.; Goh, K. L., “Yarn Flax Fibres for Polymer-Coated Sutures and Hand Layup Polymer Composite Laminates”, in Salit, M., Jawaid...