lay to rest
lay (someone or something) to rest
1. To bury someone who has died. Paul will be laid to rest on Saturday, and I plan to go to the funeral service.
2. By extension, to stop or finish discussing, thinking about, or focusing on something. OK, I think we have to agree to disagree. Let's just lay the issue to rest and stop arguing. Why are you still being so jealous? I thought we'd laid this all to rest ages ago.
See also: lay, rest
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
lay someone to rest
Euph. to bury a dead person. They laid her to rest by her mother and father, out in the old churchyard. We gather together today to lay our beloved son to rest.
See also: lay, rest
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
lay to rest
1. See lay at rest.
2. Bury someone, as in She wanted to be laid to rest beside her husband. This usage replaced the earlier go to rest. [Late 1800s]
See also: lay, rest
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
lay to rest
Bury; also, settle something with finality. In the first sense, this expression dates from the late nineteenth century, although rest in the sense of death was so used from about 1400 on. It appears in an American cowboy song, “And they laid him down to rest, with a lily on his chest.” In the second sense, it was earlier expressed as set at rest and dates from Shakespeare’s day. Charles Kingsley used the present locution in Westward Ho! (1855): “His fears, such as they were, were laid to rest.”
See also: lay, rest
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
- lay (someone or something) to rest
- lay somebody to rest
- lay something to rest
- put (someone or something) to rest
- inter in
- inter in (something)
- lay away
- bury the hatchet
- bury the hatchet, to
- hatchet