to lay an egg
6
2.0
- phrasal verb
- /leɪ æn ɛg/
:
poner un huevo
- What happens if I lay an egg?
Yes, America, Robin might well lay an egg for you, but over here, he flies away.
- Yes, America, Robin might well lay an egg for you, but over here, he flies away.
- I say that a little Sparrow builds her nest before she lays an egg.
- And instead of scolding me, she sat down to hear the wonderful story of how a hen lays an egg.
- But what it does is the adult fly flies around and then it lays an egg on the leaf surface of whatever it wants to colonize.
- The lum Herculio will actually lay an egg inside of the immature fruit and that is actually the home for the larvae of the beetle.
Examples
-
Waiting for the chicken to lay an egg?
Fiction book (2000) -
I know how they lay an egg.
-
But if you see me lay an egg, it's just between us.
-
You might lay an egg.
-
I said, "What do they expect you to do, lay an egg?"
-
- My bird laid an egg, huh?
-
You have just laid an egg.
-
We better go get her before she lays an egg or whatever the hell they do.
-
You'd better get there before she lays an egg.
-
The hen laid an egg in the nest this morning.
Synonyms
411
2.4
To produce eggs and put them in a nest or on the ground
27
4.8
To lay eggs in water like fish or frogs do
To lay eggs, usually by insects and other small animals
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to produce and deposit an egg' is directly derivable from combining 'lay' (to deposit/produce) with 'egg' (the reproductive object); the article 'an' does not affect compositionality. This is a literal, cross-linguistically common construction, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would understand the MWE.
Etymology
Lay an egg comes from the simple action of the word lay ('to put down') and the egg itself; imagine a hen pushing an egg into a nest or a turtle burying one in the sand. That's why lay an egg means 'to produce an egg'.