Word.ws English Dictionary

lie back

lie back verb: to lie down by moving in a posterior direction, ending up supine.

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To lie down by moving in a posterior direction, ending up supine.
    • The imaging technician told him to lie back and then remain still for a minute.
    Synonyms:
    supinate, resupinate
  2. To relax, to exert less effort.
    • You can predict that he's going to lie back and take it easy if you let him find out that there's no pressing deadline from the customer on this job.

Synonyms of lie back

Forms of lie back

third-person singular presentlies back
present participlelying back
pastlay back
past participlelain back

Words formed from lie back

Questions about lie back

What does lie back mean?
Lie back means to lie down by moving in a posterior direction, ending up supine.
What part of speech is lie back?
Lie back is a verb.
What is the past tense of lie back?
The past tense of lie back is lay back.

Words near lie back in the dictionary

  1. lie along
  2. lie around
  3. lie at one's door
  4. lie at someone's door
  5. lie at someone's heart
  6. lie back
  7. lie back and think of England
  8. lie before
  9. lie behind
  10. Lie bracket
  11. lie bump

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lie back (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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