lay out v.
(a) (US) to defeat or overcome; often as lay out cold
Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War 174: Old Tecumseh and myself hold on, two tough old knots, with quite enough vitality to lay out any number of those who pride themselves on what they can do. | ||
Psmith in the City (1993) 47: Yelling ‘Buck up Cottagers!’ or ‘Lay ’em out, Pensioners!’. | ||
Budgeree Ballads 102: Then Tim, in his turn, got laid out by McCoy, / And McCoy got his nose broke by Paddy O’Hare. | ‘Football at Gulligalore’ in||
Parole Chief 11: In quiet, courteous tones [he] laid him out forty ways for Sunday. | ||
Go, Man, Go! 14: Now that you’ve laid me out, when you gonna bury me? |
(b) (US) to kill.
‘English Sl.’ in Eve. Telegram (N.Y.) 9 Dec. 1/5: Let us present a few specimens:– [...] ‘Lay him out’ (a murderous phrase in use among the ‘Rattle Row Gang’). | ||
Marvel XV:373 Jan. 10: My opinion aire that he hev laid out his pards fer some reason. | ||
Pincher Martin 337: I gits rated up ten days ago, [...] death vacancy. Poor ole Byles got laid out, yer remember. | ||
Put on the Spot 20: I laid out better men ’n him before you was born. | ||
Mad mag. Dec. 25: Ed McSweeney was laid out for good, his skull mashed to a bloody mess. | ||
Down These Mean Streets (1970) 16: You’d smack him down like Whiplash does in the cowboy flick or really light him up like Scarface in that gangster picture [...] and a poor fuckin’ loudmouth is laid out. | ||
Carlito’s Way 13: [H]e’d jump out of a car [...] bat in hand—‘C’mere’—spook would run—one shot—lay ‘im out. |
(c) (orig. US) to knock someone out in a fight; thus laying-out, a beating.
Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 17: She hits harder than Bill Lord ever did; and he has laid me out twice. | ||
Night in the New Hotel in Darkey Drama 4 43: I’ll lay out dis hyar fiddler. | ||
Forty Years a Gambler 147: I began to lay them out as fast as I could with the billy. | ||
‘The Captain of the Push’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 187: Would you lay him out and kick him to a jelly on the ground? | ||
🎵 My Bill give ’im such a layin’-out, when into ’im ’e pitched. | [perf. Marie Lloyd] The Coster’s Christening||
Boss 116: He likes you, since you laid out Jimmy the Blacksmith that timeI. | ||
Western Times 11 Feb. 3/3: [She] exclaimed that she had come to see the ‘harlot,’ whom (she added) she intended to lay out like cold meat. | ||
Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 250: You hit me? You lay me out? | ‘The Gangster’s Elegy’ in||
Jim Maitland (1953) 85: You laid him out as stiff as a piece of frozen mutton. | ||
Haxby’s Circus 194: He was only a couple of days out of gaol for doing a stretch for laying a man out. | ||
Battlers 79: He’d better not come round my camp, or I’ll lay him out with the trap-setter. | ||
Look Back in Anger Act II: If you slap my face – by God, I’ll lay you out! | ||
Last Exit to Brooklyn 42: How she defied her brother, the freak, and how she laid him out and walked right out of the house. | ||
Carlito’s Way 15: Wap! — Big Jeff laid you out. | ||
Powder 29: If it hadn’t been Ticky’s twenty-first, Guy might have had to lay the fat boy out, then and there. | ||
Adventures 104: Cowboy threw a lightning-fast uppercut [...] Laid Jamal out like a side of meat. | ||
Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] I’d [...] laid out the blighter with a cricket bat. | ‘Dread Fellow Churls’ in
(d) (Aus.) to indulge oneself to excess, e.g. in drinking.
Tenting on the Plains (rev. edn 1895) 373: The stage-station liquor was concocted from drugs and had power to lay out even a hard-drinking old cavalry-man like a dead person in what seemed no time at all. | ||
Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Dec. 42/2: Dan Boyle jogged into New Plymouth [...] with a £75 cheque [....], a chronic thirst [...] and a settled determination to ‘lay himself out,’ and ‘to do it in,’ and ‘make a name for himself’ in the approved fashion. |
(e) (US) to amaze or astound.
(con. c.1840) Huckleberry Finn 215: Let ’em fetch along their suspicions now if they want to — this ’ll lay ’em out. | ||
Limo 82: ‘In Act Three, the duet between the Count and Susanna, that lays me out, man’. |
(f) (US) to scold or reprimand; thus laying out n., a scolding.
Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. xix: I lost just five hundred cold ones by the deal, and I sure does give this guy a laying out. | ||
Torchy 143: She starts to lay out Mr. Robert good, for givin’ the frosty paw to a relation. | ||
Pleasure Man (1997) II ii: I just laid him out stinkin’, the shopworn mess. | ||
Put on the Spot 29: They’re laying me out like nobody’s business. | ||
(con. 1940s–60s) Straight from the Fridge Dad 137: Now that you’ve laid me out, when you gonna bury me? Have you finished criticizing me, or do I have to listen to more? | ||
Pirate for Life 91: I don’t recall exactly what she wrote in it, but I know it was just laced with profanities and she laid him out. |
(g) (US black) to stop what one is doing, esp. suddenly; to absent oneself from a committment.
cited in Juba to Jive (1994). | ||
Life Its Ownself 145: Under the rules, therefore, he could lay out a season—this one—and be eligible to play for another school next year. |
(h) (US black) to avoid someone, to step aside.
cited in Juba to Jive (1994). |
2. (also lay it out) to inform, to pass on information, to make something clear.
Und. and Prison Sl. 50: layout, v. To plan a robbery. | ||
DAUL 122/2: Lay out, v. To draft plans, as for a theft. | et al.||
Down These Mean Streets (1970) 324: I tried to lay out the scene I’d pass through at nine o’clock that night. | ||
Semi-Tough 11: How come you standin’ up there layin’ out all this jive? | ||
You Flash Bastard 35: He laid out the prospect of the jewellry store raid to the senior detective, as he had done with other cases before. | ||
Airtight Willie and Me 32: Like I laid it out front, you ain’t got nothing but sucker odds. | ||
Close Pursuit (1988) 157: Peruggio lit a stogie as Kennedy laid it out for him. | ||
(con. 1970s) King Suckerman (1998) 73: They laid that shit out and ran it down. | ||
Chicken (2003) 130: I laid out the whole thing, soup to nuts. |
3. (US campus) to sunbathe.
Current Sl. I:2 4/1: Lay out, v. Get a tan. | ||
Sl. and Sociability 30: In college slang out is the most productive particle: [...] lay out ‘sunbathe’. |
4. (US black) to have sexual intercourse.
Mr Jive-Ass Nigger 14: [H]e was (un)fortunately seduced by a wayward and voluptuous aunt. After this initial loss of innocence, the boy took to laying out with women. |
5. (Irish) to deceive sexually.
Riordans 47: Minnie believed for a while that he had another woman, (or, as Francey put it, that he was layin’ out), but it turned out that the only rival was the horse. |
In phrases
1. of a homosexual of either sex, to admit and poss. flaunt one’s sexual preference.
Maledicta VI:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 129: Some are bold to proclaim they are dykes and lay it out before us. |
2. to offer oneself for intercourse.
Rivethead (1992) 53: White trash hookers who’d lay it all out on a haymow. |
3. see sense 2 above.
to tell all the facts.
From Here to Eternity (1998) 839: I’ll lay it out for you straight. | ||
College Sl. Research Project (Cal. State Poly. Uni., Pomona) 🌐 Lay it out straight (verb phrase) Tell it like it is. |
to knock out, to defeat.
Mass. Spy 22 July n.p.: I want to lay out [this candidate] as cold as a wedge. | ||
in Military and Naval Mag. of US June 248: They came mighty near laying us out cold as a wagon-tire [HDAS]. | ||
Congressional Globe 17 Apr. 759: Gentlemen of the South, you have us in your power. All I ask is that, after you have laid us out cold, you will not point us out as having been bought dog-cheap. | ||
Colonel’s Dream 222: Lee had more strength, but Bark had more science, an’ laid Lee out col’. | ||
Derby Dly Teleg. 18 June 4/4: The communists are not human beings. we will lay them out cold. | ||
Eve. Teleg (Dundee) 14 Nov. 8/2: This potent liquor was supposed to lay you out cold. | ||
(con. 1920s) Studs Lonigan (1936) 388: He’d like to take Smith and Dolan on together and lay them out cold. | Young Manhood in
(US) to scold severely, to indulge in a verbal battle.
Yankee Auctioneer 185: With that I moved over in front of the troublemakers and laid them out in lavender. The staid old hall where I was holding this sale never before heard the English language reeled off in the style I rendered right then. | ||
in DARE. | ||
Harper’s Weekly 26 Jan. 19: ‘I’ll lay you out in lavender’ (I’ll scold you severely) [HDAS]. |
(US) to knock unconscious.
Collier’s 19 Sept. 48: To-day Tierney would lay you like a carpet [HDAS]. | ||
Prison Doctor 135: You can lay that dinge like a carpet. | ||
in New Yorker 11 Mar. 23: Dempsey would lay Louis out like a carpet [HDAS]. |