lay

1. 1.

   a narrative song with a recurrent refrain

   Synonymsballad

   Broadersong

   Narrowerminstrelsy
2. 2.

   a narrative poem of popular origin

   Synonymsballad

   Broaderpoem

   NarrowerEdda

1. 1.

   characteristic of those who are not members of the clergy

   “set his collar in laic rather than clerical position”

   “the lay ministry”

   Synonymslaicsecular

   Similarprofane
2. 2.

   not of or from a profession

   “a lay opinion as to the cause of the disease”

   Similarnonprofessional

Other forms of lay

plural

lays·

past tense or participle

laid

present participle

laying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about lay

What does lay mean?

lay means "put into a certain place or abstract location". That is the primary sense; the word has 9 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in lay?

lay has 1 syllable: lay. In IPA it is /ˈleɪ/.

What is another word for lay?

Close synonyms include put, set, place, pose, position. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is lay a common word?

lay is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with lay?

21 words rhyme with lay. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.