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LIE IN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (verb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Be in confinement for childbirth
Classified under:
Verbs of grooming, dressing and bodily care
"Lie in" entails doing...:
bear; birth; deliver; give birth; have (cause to be born)
Sentence frame:
Somebody ----s
Sense 2
Meaning:
Originate (in)
Example:
The problems dwell in the social injustices in this country
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Verbs of being, having, spatial relations
Hypernyms (to "lie in" is one way to...):
be; exist (have an existence, be extant)
Sentence frame:
Something is ----ing PP
Context examples:
Why, I could name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above—he pointed northwards—or where the currents may have drifted them.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
Their composition, whether of atoms, molecules, grains or cells, do not lie in a neat, orderly pattern, but, instead, are all jumbled up.
(Materials, like metallic glass, can help us understand how cells break, NSF)
As this also did no good, he thought to himself: “When two people lie in bed together, they warm each other,” and carried him to the bed, covered him over and lay down by him.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Yet after a time I DID say, for at first I was quite overcome—that if she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every encouragement in my power.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
I try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes of the purse I am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my hands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my lap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he deemed, an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
“A man who has been three years biting his nails on a desert island, Jim, can't expect to appear as sane as you or me. It doesn't lie in human nature. Was it cheese you said he had a fancy for?”
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
It was necessary that I should return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Lord John Roxton was right when he thought that some specially toxic quality might lie in the bite of the horrible creatures which had attacked us.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
