: to lie in wait for or attack (someone) from ambush
… he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of trouble yet. Charles Dickens
2
: to temporarily stop the movement or progress of (someone or something)
The barkeeper, Tony, would come out of his saloon and wait to waylay the men going home. He could always entice a man with a full pocket into his saloon. Meridel Le Sueur
I can get waylaid by tangential thoughts and associations in mid-sentence, and this leads to parentheses, subordinate clauses, sentences of paragraphic length. I never use one adjective if six seem to me better and, in their cumulative effect, more incisive. Oliver Sacks
Gangs sometimes waylay travelers on that road. We were waylaid by a group of kids with water balloons.
Recent Examples on the WebRed is better for bats and insects but can waylay migrating birds. Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 13 June 2022 Children emerge armed from their houses and bands of revelers gather on the sides of the roads ready to waylay passersby. The Conversation, oregonlive, 12 Apr. 2022 For months, scientists have been monitoring the lift and drop in protection from asymptomatic infection and milder forms of COVID-19, dynamics that seem tightly tethered to antibodies, the molecules that can waylay viruses outside of cells. Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 29 Dec. 2021 If a global health crisis couldn’t waylay them, a few temperamental artists don’t stand a chance. Sarah Medford, WSJ, 8 Dec. 2021 Last month, Evans gave a TEDx talk in Temecula that included evidence that poker playing shows potential to slow the aging of the brain and is a tool to waylay dementia’s onset. Diane Bell Columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Oct. 2021 Although Almeyda, disguised as an old woman, does set out to find Anninho, the book is more interested in the different people who waylay her, and who all have different views on freedom and how to pursue it. Sam Sacks, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2021 The party once freely condemned the would-be insurrectionists who attempted to waylay democracy. Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 11 Aug. 2021 This works best against a pathogen such as a bacterium, which neutrophils can waylay outside of cells; within minutes of an invasion, the horde will begin gobbling up its opponents and tossing noxious, microbe-killing grenades into the fray. Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 17 June 2021 See More