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waylay.

To lie in wait for and attack from ambush.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˌweɪˈleɪ/UK/ˈweɪleɪ/UK/ˈweɪleɪ/US
  1. To lie in wait for and attack from ambush.

    transitive
  2. To accost or intercept unexpectedly.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From way + lay, likely a calque of Middle Dutch wegelagen (“besetting of ways, lying in wait with evil or hostile intent along public ways”). Compare Middle Low German wegelagen, German wegelagern (“to waylay; rob”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.