Lay off means to dismiss workers because there isn't enough work or money: the employee hasn't done anything wrong. Sometimes it's temporary, and people are taken back when work picks up again. In informal speech there's a second meaning: to stop doing something, or to stop bothering someone. Lay off the coffee means 'stop drinking so much coffee', and lay off him means 'leave him alone'.
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lay off + workers/staff; lay + them + off; be laid off (from + job); lay off + food/drink (informal)
- The factory laid off forty workers when its biggest client moved production abroad.
- After ten years at the bank, my uncle was laid off during the financial crisis.
- The doctor told me to lay off sugar and fried food for a while.
What changed
First versionLast month the hotel layed off half of its staff.
RevisionLast month the hotel laid off half of its staff.
Lay is an irregular verb: lay, laid, laid. There's no form layed, so in the past tense you write laid off. Don't confuse it with lie (as in lie on the sofa): its past form is actually lay.
Fire and sack usually mean dismissing someone for misconduct or poor performance: He was fired for stealing from the till. When someone is laid off, it's not their fault; there's simply no work. In British English, people often say be made redundant in the same sense: She was made redundant when the branch closed.
Your turn
The factory lost its biggest client, so two hundred workers were ___ until new orders came in.
Show the answer
laid off — The workers were let go because of a lack of orders, and the plan is to bring them back when orders come in, so laid off fits. Fired means dismissed for good, usually for doing something wrong, and it doesn't go with until new orders came in.
Write about a company or industry that has laid people off, one you know personally or from the news. Say how many people lost their jobs and why.
In 2020 the airline where my friend worked laid off about three hundred people because almost nobody was flying.
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