What's the difference between lay and slay?

Lay


Definition:

  • (imp.) of Lie, to recline.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the laity, as distinct from the clergy; as, a lay person; a lay preacher; a lay brother.
  • (a.) Not educated or cultivated; ignorant.
  • (a.) Not belonging to, or emanating from, a particular profession; unprofessional; as, a lay opinion regarding the nature of a disease.
  • (n.) The laity; the common people.
  • (n.) A meadow. See Lea.
  • (n.) Faith; creed; religious profession.
  • (n.) A law.
  • (n.) An obligation; a vow.
  • (a.) A song; a simple lyrical poem; a ballad.
  • (a.) A melody; any musical utterance.
  • (v. t.) To cause to lie down, to be prostrate, or to lie against something; to put or set down; to deposit; as, to lay a book on the table; to lay a body in the grave; a shower lays the dust.
  • (v. t.) To place in position; to establish firmly; to arrange with regularity; to dispose in ranks or tiers; as, to lay a corner stone; to lay bricks in a wall; to lay the covers on a table.
  • (v. t.) To prepare; to make ready; to contrive; to provide; as, to lay a snare, an ambush, or a plan.
  • (v. t.) To spread on a surface; as, to lay plaster or paint.
  • (v. t.) To cause to be still; to calm; to allay; to suppress; to exorcise, as an evil spirit.
  • (v. t.) To cause to lie dead or dying.
  • (v. t.) To deposit, as a wager; to stake; to risk.
  • (v. t.) To bring forth and deposit; as, to lay eggs.
  • (v. t.) To apply; to put.
  • (v. t.) To impose, as a burden, suffering, or punishment; to assess, as a tax; as, to lay a tax on land.
  • (v. t.) To impute; to charge; to allege.
  • (v. t.) To impose, as a command or a duty; as, to lay commands on one.
  • (v. t.) To present or offer; as, to lay an indictment in a particular county; to lay a scheme before one.
  • (v. t.) To state; to allege; as, to lay the venue.
  • (v. t.) To point; to aim; as, to lay a gun.
  • (v. t.) To put the strands of (a rope, a cable, etc.) in their proper places and twist or unite them; as, to lay a cable or rope.
  • (v. t.) To place and arrange (pages) for a form upon the imposing stone.
  • (v. t.) To place (new type) properly in the cases.
  • (v. i.) To produce and deposit eggs.
  • (v. i.) To take a position; to come or go; as, to lay forward; to lay aloft.
  • (v. i.) To lay a wager; to bet.
  • (n.) That which lies or is laid or is conceived of as having been laid or placed in its position; a row; a stratum; a layer; as, a lay of stone or wood.
  • (v. t.) A wager.
  • (v. t.) A job, price, or profit.
  • (v. t.) A share of the proceeds or profits of an enterprise; as, when a man ships for a whaling voyage, he agrees for a certain lay.
  • (v. t.) A measure of yarn; a lea. See 1st Lea (a).
  • (v. t.) The lathe of a loom. See Lathe, 3.
  • (v. t.) A plan; a scheme.
  • (imp.) of Lie

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Typological and archaeological investigations indicate that the church building represents originally the hospital facility for the lay brothers of the monastery, which according to the chronicle of the monastery was built in the beginning of the 14th century.
  • (2) Labour MP Jamie Reed, whose Copeland constituency includes Sellafield, called on the government to lay out details of a potential plan to build a new Mox plant at the site.
  • (3) The hippocampus plays an essential role in the laying down of cognitive memories, the pathway to the frontal lobe being via the MD thalamus.
  • (4) The glory lay in the defiance, although the outcome of the tie scarcely looks promising for Arsenal when the return at Camp Nou next Tuesday is borne in mind.
  • (5) As of July 1987, 10 states have prohibitory laws, five states have grandmother clauses authorizing practicing midwives under repealed statutes, five states have enabling laws which are not used, and 10 states explicitly permit lay midwives to practice.
  • (6) Speaking at The Carbon Show in London today, Philippe Chauvancy, director at climate exchange BlueNext, said that the announcement last week that it is to develop China's first standard for voluntary emission reduction projects alongside the government-backed China Beijing Environmental Exchange, could lay the foundations for a voluntary cap-and-trade scheme.
  • (7) He speeded the process of decolonisation, and was the first British prime minister to appreciate that Britain's future lay with Europe.
  • (8) This situation suppressed egg laying and resulted in a clearly decreased bone mineralization.
  • (9) Agir, launched in June as the Sahel crisis was taking hold, lays out a roadmap for better co-ordination of humanitarian and development aid to protect the most vulnerable people when drought hits again.
  • (10) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (11) To overcome some of these problems it is suggested that an investigation of lay evaluation of health care should be carried out within a conceptual framework which incorporates the following elements.
  • (12) Three of the abscesses were intrapulmonary, and each lay adjacent to a pleural surface.
  • (13) Nowadays hardly a publication comes out of the regulator without it laying down another "matter for government".
  • (14) An intelligence officer told Associated Press that they were aware of the movement, but that the military is acting with care as many civilians are still trapped in the town and Boko Haram is laying land mines around it.
  • (15) After 14 minutes, Rose got in behind the Hull defence to lay on the opening goal for Eriksen while the second followed an incision up the other flank from Walker.
  • (16) In contrast, bilateral lesions of all cerebral ganglion peripheral nerves did not abolish spontaneous egg laying, suggesting that sensory input to the cerebral ganglion is not necessary for activating the bag cells.
  • (17) Several axon terminals lay close to blood vessels, and may modulate the activity of these vessels.
  • (18) Seasonal and habitat influences on the egg-laying activity of four species of Culex were compared in south Florida using jar- and vat-type oviposition traps.
  • (19) Those fed royal jelly as larvae emerge as queens and do little but lay eggs.
  • (20) Prolactin secretion was stimulated less in incubating hens deprived of their nests for 24 h (nest-deprived) than in laying hens after administration of the 5-HT receptor agonist quipazine, or precursor 5-hydroxytryptophan.

Slay


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To put to death with a weapon, or by violence; hence, to kill; to put an end to; to destroy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They are small-state Conservatives who believe the commercial world should provide.” Bryant, whose campaign against phone hacking won an award and who has a cartoon of himself as Luke Skywalker slaying the Sith lords Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks on his office wall, said the rumoured return of Brooks to News UK, if it happened, would be a “massive two fingers to the British public”.
  • (2) The film's most chilling image, revealed later on in flashback, is of the tiny Li'l Dice returning to the motel alone and gleefully slaying everyone inside.
  • (3) Perhaps it is the proximity of comedy and aggression (comics like to "slay" or "kill" their audiences, after all) that makes it strangely appropriate to see Sandler showing a more serious and volatile side.
  • (4) vale (@r4ulsonfeels) IM GOING TO SELL MY SOUL TO SATAN FOR GILLIAN AS THE FIRST FEMALE BOND HAPPEN May 21, 2016 charlotte✨ (@bensonscully) @GillianA OK BUT ALSO IDRIS ELBA CAN BE JAMES BOND AND YOU CAN BE JANE BOND AND YOU CAN SLAY EVERYONE May 21, 2016 Kelley Sublett (@Kel_Sub) @felishacarolle And now that someone has put the idea out there...GIVE ME A FEMALE BOND STAT!
  • (5) "Those [from the UK] on the temporary employment register are there for a reason, usually negative," wrote Chris Slay, director of another firm, Skills Provision, in a newsletter to clients .
  • (6) Cain slayed Abel for being more favoured by God than he.
  • (7) This gives the state easy demons to portray and then slay.
  • (8) And now there is a national development plan to slay the three-headed dragon of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
  • (9) The only real difference between Adam and Eve's kids and Marion and Ralph's over-achieving sons is that while the first murderer (Cain) slew Abel because, according to Genesis, the latter was favoured by God, David might have to slay Ed for being favoured by Labour party members.
  • (10) But traders were also cheered that Shinzo Abe promised no let-up in in his drive to stimulate economic growth and slay inflation: In a video message released after his cabiet approved his economic plans, Abe declared: The growth strategy decided today will be the starting point.
  • (11) But the symbolic slaying was a draw, by the hand of tiny New Zealand, of whom nothing was expected.
  • (12) His big-game-slaying holiday was estimated to cost €10,000 (£8,000) a day, with a Syrian businessman close to the Saudi royal family rumoured to be picking up the tab.
  • (13) Rather than explore dungeons slaying and looting, the game put you in charge of the dungeon, digging out new rooms and populating them with monsters and traps.
  • (14) While the passersby and pedestrians you slay out of mission will occasionally drop money, it would be hard to argue that the game rewards you for indiscriminate slaughter.
  • (15) There has been very little research done on family slayings in the RSA.
  • (16) Memorial was forced to close its Grozny office after the 2009 slaying of activist and board member Natalya Estemirova , who was personally investigating “hundreds” of highly sensitive cases of kidnapping and murder.
  • (17) The peculiar thing about the opera is that the back story – war, slayings, the murder of the Irish princess Isolde's betrothed by the Cornish knight Tristan, her determination to kill the latter, her failure to do so, the way she healed Tristan's wounds and kept his identity secret – is more interesting than the story itself, which revolves around the pair not quite being able to make love despite drinking a love potion (substituted by Isolde's lady-in-waiting Brangäne for the poison with which Isolde intended to kill both Tristan and herself as they journeyed to Cornwall, where she was to marry boring old King Marke).
  • (18) The anniversary of the shootings and how it will impact the victims' families has weighed heavily on Gerald Massengill, who led a governor-appointed panel that investigated the slayings.
  • (19) Ebel is also a suspect in the slaying of a Colorado pizza deliveryman who disappeared from work and whose body was found Sunday evening.
  • (20) Beyoncé’s use of “slay” is an additional embrace of the language of the black queer community and, in its repetition, it’s an incantation that can slay haters, slay patriarchy, to slay white supremacy.

Words possibly related to "lay"

Words possibly related to "slay"