Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The den or dwelling of a wild animal.
  • noun A den or hideaway.
  • noun Obsolete A resting place; a couch.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To put or have put in a lair or den.
  • To shelter; hold as in a lair.
  • To lie (on); rest inactively.
  • To enter a lair; lie down (in); lurk.
  • noun A place in which to lie or rest; a bed; a couch: now used only of, or with figurative reference to, the den or resting-place of a wild beast.
  • noun A litter, as of rabbits; a stock.
  • noun An open pasture; a field.
  • noun Aportion of a burying-ground affording space sufficient for one or more graves; a burial-plot.
  • To sink when wading in snow, mud, or quagmire.
  • noun A Scotch form of lore.
  • noun Clay; earth.
  • noun Mire; a bog; a quagmire.
  • noun Soil; land; ground: in this sense probably confused with lair, 3.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A place in which to lie or rest; especially, the bed or couch of a wild beast.
  • noun Scot. A burying place.
  • noun obsolete A pasture; sometimes, food.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A place inhabited by a wild animal, often a cave or a hole in the ground.
  • noun figuratively A place inhabited by a criminal or criminals, a superhero or a supervillain.
  • verb transitive, Scotland To mire.
  • verb intransitive, Scotland To become mired.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the habitation of wild animals

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English leger; see legh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English leġer ("couch, bed"), from Proto-Germanic *legran, from Proto-Indo-European *leǵh-.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Australian slang: a flashily-dressed young man

    "At the Tivoli, said Lester, and then The Blue Room. Ooh, I was a lair then. All the best people'd sing me songs. I wrote for the best of em."

    Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 72 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition

    March 31, 2010

  • Australian slang: a flashily dressed young man of brash and vulgar behaviour, to dress up in flashy clothes, to renovate or dress up something in bad taste

    July 12, 2018

  • Also the adjective lairy.

    July 13, 2018