lay up

1. 1.

   disable or confine, as with an illness

   “She was laid up with pneumonia for six weeks”

   Broaderdisable

Questions about lay up

What does lay up mean?

lay up means "disable or confine, as with an illness".

Is lay up a common word?

lay up is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.