lay-by
/ˈleɪ.baɪ/
"lay-by" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“lay-by” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A paved area at the side of a highway designated for drivers to stop in, for emergency parking, or where vehicles can wait, with larger lay-bys possibly having facilities such as food vendors or pu...
Corpus desk
Index EN-lay-by · lay-by · English
lay-by · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "L" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lay-by |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈleɪ.baɪ/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “lay-by” in English
Rare enough to double-check
lay-by is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈleɪ.baɪ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for lay-by in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is lay-by, spelled L-A-Y---B-Y.
Definition
- 1A paved area at the side of a highway designated for drivers to stop in, for emergency parking, or where vehicles can wait, with larger lay-bys possibly having facilities such as food vendors or public telephones.
- 2A railroad siding; a second, short railroad track just to the side of a railroad track, connected with the main track by a switch and used for unloading, bypassing, etc.
- 3A widened section of a narrow river or canal, formed to one side so as to leave the channel free, for mooring of vessels, where vessels can lay over or allow others to pass.
- 4A method of retail purchase in which the selected goods are set aside and the customer pays for them in instalments, receiving them when fully paid; layaway.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how lay-by appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
1930 October 16, Hordern Brothers (Sydney retailer), advertisement, quoted in 1966, Sidney J. Baker, The Australian Language, second edition, chapter X, section 2, page 206, Avail yourself of our Lay-By Service
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.