Word.ws English Dictionary

lying by

lying by is the present participle and gerund of lie by.

Meaning of lie by

Verb

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

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To have sex with.
    • Than he lete make a cry thorow all the oste that uppon layne of lyff and lymme […] that no lyege man that longyth to his oste sholde lye be no maydens ne ladyes nother no burgessis wyff that to the cité longis., Book V
    Synonyms:
    lie with
  2. (dated, intransitive) To rest from labour; to take a break.
    Synonyms:
    have a break, take five

Questions about lying by

What is lying by the present participle and gerund of?
Lying by is the present participle and gerund of lie by.

Words near lying by in the dictionary

  1. lying at someone's heart
  2. lying back
  3. lying back and thinking of England
  4. lying before
  5. lying behind
  6. lying by
  7. lying doggo
  8. lying down
  9. lying down on the job
  10. lying flat
  11. lying ill in one's mouth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lying by (page history and authors); lie by (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: “lying by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lying_by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.