to lay up
2
6.1
- phrasal verb
- /leɪ ʌp/
:
postrar
- Mild fracture, but she's laid up just the same.
- laid up in a hospital
Examples
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- Barbara was laid up with a fever last night.
-
My novel came to me in a dream, but several dreams over a month while I was laid up from back surgery.
Blog text (15) -
Among many other things, I will never forget going to visit John when he was laid up with a bullet in his gut.
Blog text (29) -
He was laid up for six months.
-
He's laid up with rheumatism something terrible.
Fiction book (1995) -
My partner, Danny Kohana, hocked everything to go into business with me and now he's laid up with a broken leg.
-
After twisting his ankle during the game, he was laid up for two weeks.
-
The flu laid up her in bed for several days, preventing her from going to work.
-
Due to a severe cold, he was laid up at home, missing all of his meetings.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'to confine someone to bed' is partially related to 'lay' (to place) combined with the particle 'up', since '... up' can signal a resultant or completed state. However, the specific meaning of being incapacitated or bed-bound is not directly predictable from the literal constituents (and the provided definition of 'up' does not clearly point to 'in bed'), so a B1 learner would only partially infer the meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrasal verb lay up comes from the simple image of putting someone down to rest after sickness or injury. The parts lay (to put down) and up (into a place of rest) explain why it means 'to keep someone in bed or stop them from working'.