Word.ws English Dictionary

lyme

lyme verb: to hang out (to spend time doing nothing in particular).

Verb

lyme (third-person singular simple present lymes, present participle lyming, simple past and past participle lymed)

  1. (Jamaica, slang) to hang out (to spend time doing nothing in particular)
    • But everyday,^([sic]) while all of this was going on, there'd be some lyming (hanging out)—and this is how the spirit of the music was absorbed, how apprentices both learned and caught on.2006, Colin Channer, Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction from Jamaica's Calabash Writer's Workshop, page 19
    • […] in Carlton's living room one Saturday evening, spending a few hours lyming over rum and, of all things, codfish dumplings, another thing Carlton loved, even in the evening […]2008, Thomas Glave, The Torturer's Wife, page 229

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Lyme

Lyme

  1. A surname.
  2. A town in New London County, Connecticut, United States.
  3. A town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States.
  4. A town in Jefferson County, New York, United States.
  5. Synonym of Forest of Lyme, mainly in Staffordshire, England
    Synonyms:
    Forest of Lyme, mainly in Staffordshire, England

Noun capitalized: Lyme

Lyme (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Lyme disease.
    • Statewide there was a 16 percent increase in Lyme cases from 7,543 in 2016 to 8,720 last year.2018 August 23, “Lyme diseases cases spiked by 50 percent in Dutchess in 2017”, in Poughkeepsie Journal, archived from the original on 10 Apr 2021

Proper noun (2) capitalized: LYME

LYME

  1. A solution stack consisting of the Linux operating system, Yaws web server, Mnesia database, and Erlang programming language.

Synonyms of lyme

Forms of lyme

third-person singular presentlymes
present participlelyming
past participlelymed
pastlymed

Origin of lyme

All three towns are named after Lyme Regis in Dorset, England.

Words formed from lyme

Phrases with lyme

Questions about lyme

What does lyme mean?
Lyme means to hang out (to spend time doing nothing in particular).
What part of speech is lyme?
Lyme can be a verb, a proper noun or a noun.
What is the past tense of lyme?
The past tense of lyme is lymed.

Words near lyme in the dictionary

  1. lymantrids
  2. lymantriid
  3. lymantriids
  4. lymantriine
  5. lymantriines
  6. lyme
  7. Lyme Bay
  8. Lyme disease
  9. Lyme diseases
  10. lyme grass
  11. lyme grasses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lyme (page history and authors); Lyme (page history and authors); LYME (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-lyme.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lyme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lyme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.