Word.ws English Dictionary

lie upon

lie upon verb: to be incumbent upon; to be up to (someone); to be obligatory upon.

Verb

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

  1. (archaic) To be incumbent upon; to be up to (someone); to be obligatory upon.
    • It lies upon the prosecution to prove that the defendant is guilty.
  2. To lie on.
    • She was lying upon the bed.
  3. (obsolete) To importune; to urge; to solicit.
    • The judge in the parable granted the widow's suit merely because she lay upon him, and was troublesome to him.

Forms of lie upon

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

Questions about lie upon

What does lie upon mean?
Lie upon means to be incumbent upon; to be up to (someone); to be obligatory upon.
What part of speech is lie upon?
Lie upon is a verb.
What is the past tense of lie upon?
The past tense of lie upon is lay upon.

Words near lie upon in the dictionary

  1. lie on the oars
  2. lie over
  3. lie rough
  4. lie through one's teeth
  5. lie to
  6. lie upon
  7. lie waste
  8. lie with
  9. lie-abed
  10. lie-abeds
  11. lie-beral

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lie upon (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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Cite this entry: “lie upon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lie_upon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.