waylay

present singular third person waylays · participle present waylaying · participle past waylaid · past waylaid · nonstandard participle past waylayed · nonstandard past waylayed

1. transitiveTo lie in wait for and attack from ambush.

   1 more example

   Oh! youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect love, how often have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment,—even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude, might have a like prerogative; might have power given to it from above to chase—to haunt—to way-lay—to overtake—to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave—there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation!

   1821 September–October, [Thomas De Quincey], “[Part I.] Preliminary Confessions.”, in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 2nd edition, London: […] [J. Moyes] for Taylor and Hessey, […], published 1823, →OCLC, pages 52–53

   Synonyms: ambush, lurk

2. transitiveTo accost or intercept unexpectedly.

   And when some of the friends, the ones who came every day, waylaid the doctor in the corridor, Stephen was the one who asked the most informed questions, who’d been keeping up not just with the stories that appeared several times a week in the Times […]

   1986 November 24, Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now”, in The New Yorker

   2 more examples

   And thereafter the name and fame of the man with the thousand dozen eggs began to spread through the land. […] Dyea and Skaguay took an interest in his being, and questioned his progress from every man who came over the passes. While Dawson—golden, omeletless Dawson—fretted and worried, and waylaid every chance arrival for word of him.

   1903 March, Jack London, “The One Thousand Dozen”, in The National Magazine […], volume XVII, number 6, Boston, Mass.: W. W. Potter Co., →OCLC, page 708, column 1

   I, their host, often waylay them and try to commune with them; but always they glide past me. And how gracefully they glide, these ghosts! It is a pleasure to watch them. It is a lesson in deportment. May they never be laid! Of all my household-pets, they are the dearest to me.

   1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC

   Synonyms: buttonhole