lay off
"lay-off" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“lay off” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - (of an employer) To dismiss (workers) from employment, e.g. at a time of low business volume or through no fault of the worker, often with a severance package.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | lay off |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “lay off” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for lay off is 7 letters long, classified as a verb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for lay off, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our dataset records no confusable match here, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is lay off, spelled L-A-Y- -O-F-F.
Definition
- 1(of an employer) To dismiss (workers) from employment, e.g. at a time of low business volume or through no fault of the worker, often with a severance package.
- 2To place all or part of a bet with another bookmaker in order to reduce risk.
- 3To cease, quit, stop (doing something).
- 4To stop bothering, teasing, or pestering someone; to leave (someone) alone.
- 5In painting, to apply gentle strokes to smooth a wet coat of paint so as to remove visible roller- or brush-marks, commonly using a dry brush; a similar technique, but using a loaded laying-off brush, may produce a smooth coat of paint when using a roller or the usual brush techniques would leave marks.
- 6To plan out (a navigational course) using a chart.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “lay off”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is L-A-Y- -O-F-F - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.