Waylaying

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act by which somebody is waylaid; an ambush.

    "Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate—and events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate—the waylayings to which he was subjected."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of waylay form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate—and events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate—the waylayings to which he was subjected."

Etymology

From waylay + -ing.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.