lay on the line
Idioms-
Make ready for payment, as in They laid hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line to develop the new software . [c. 1900]
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lay it on the line . Speak frankly and firmly, make something clear. For example, The professor laid it on the line: either hand in a term paper or fail the course . [c. 1920]
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Put something at risk, as in The troops sent overseas were laying their lives on the line . [Mid-1900s]
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.
So how did Paul do in the clutch—when it mattered, when all eyes were on him, when the fate of the Republican Party lay on the line?
From The New Yorker
Most unhappily for itself Byzantium lay on the line of division between the eastern provinces, where Pescennius Niger had been proclaimed, and the Illyrian provinces, where Severus had assumed the imperial style.
From Project Gutenberg
These he kindly promised to me, even authorizing me to get them at the place where he had deposited them, and which lay on the line of my daily tramp to the ruins.
From Project Gutenberg
The policy of the Corning Foundation is to demand something very definite in return for the money they lay on the line.
From Project Gutenberg
Two unfortunate small villages which lay on the line of march were surrounded and the inhabitants massacred.
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.
