unlaid
Americanadjective
-
not laid or placed.
The table is still unlaid.
-
(of dead bodies) not laid out; not prepared for burial.
-
not laid to rest, as a spirit.
-
untwisted, as a rope.
Etymology
Origin of unlaid
First recorded in 1425–75, unlaid is from the late Middle English word unleyd. See un- 1, laid
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Yet as Freud himself wrote, “A thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been solved and the spell broken.”
From Washington Post
For the first time, researchers have found an unlaid egg inside a fossil bird.
From Science Magazine
They found the poison in all of the testes of male robins examined, in developing egg follicles, in the ovaries of females, in completed but unlaid eggs, in the oviducts, in unhatched eggs from deserted nests, in embryos within the eggs, and in a newly hatched, dead nestling.
From Literature
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Kerry Perkins, an aquarist at the Sea Life aquarium in Brighton, said a four-year fast was a possibility, but noted that the octopus may have got nutrients from unlaid eggs or very occasional, unobserved titbits.
From BBC
It was long ago in my youth and pride, When my young thoughts lived and my young thoughts died, And often and over all unafraid They wander and wander like ghosts unlaid.
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.