Outlying

How to spell outlying

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce outlying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does outlying mean?

1. adjectiveSituated far from a central point or main area; remote or peripheral.

Outlying in a sentence

• The bus service rarely reaches the outlying villages.

• Engineers struggled to bring broadband to the outlying farms.

Where does outlying come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, built from the everyday word 'out', meaning beyond or away from a centre, and 'lying', the present participle of the verb 'lie' in its older sense of 'to be situated or positioned'. That verb 'lie' descends from Old English 'licgan', meaning to rest or be laid down, and it is the same word that gives us a body 'lying' on a bed or a town 'lying' in a valley; it should not be confused with the unrelated 'lie' meaning to tell an untruth. The combination emerged in English to describe places that are situated beyond the main settled area, and it has been used as an adjective since around the seventeenth century. The spelling trap is the y: the verb 'lie' changes its 'ie' to a 'y' before the '-ing' ending (lie becomes lying), so the word is 'outlying', never 'outlieing'. Knowing it is simply 'out' plus 'lying' keeps the single l and the y firmly in place.

How the word is built

• out- (beyond, away from)
• lying (present participle of lie, meaning to be situated)