Chiefly U.S. [See lay out, LAY v.1 56.]
1. The laying out, planning or disposition of land, streets, etc.; also, the land so laid out.
1888. P. Henderson, in Harper’s Mag., July, 285. Although the conception of its lay-out dates back nearly half a century, the tree planting that has added so much to Washington was begun only in 1872.
1895. Forum (N.Y.), Sept., 80. In the lay-out and construction of a very considerable part of the railway service of this country.
1898. C. O. Parmenter, Hist. Pelham, Mass., 158. A portion of the town is south of the original layout.
1900. I. P. Roberts (title), The Farmstead, the Making of the Rural Home and the Lay-out of the Farm.
2. Something laid or spread out; a display; a ‘spread’; the tools or apparatus pertaining to some occupation, etc.
1869. A. K. McClure, Rocky Mts., 219. His [sc. a miner’s] necessities are appreciated by the other owners, who get up a most expensive ‘lay-out’ for him.
1898. ‘Mark Twain,’ in Cosmopolitan, 12 Aug., 426. Of all the barbarous layouts that were ever contrived this was the most atrocious.
3. Cards. In Faro: see quot.
1889. in Century Dict.
1894. Maskelyne, Sharps & Flats, 189. The layout. The designation of this adjunct to the game is derived from the fact that it forms that part of the table upon which the players ‘lay out’ their stakes. Usually it is a green cloth, having painted upon it a representation of the thirteen cards of one suit.
4. ‘The space occupied or fished over by a haul-seine’ (Cent. Dict.).
5. attrib. in lay-out line, ‘a long line buoyed at each end, from which baited hook-lines run into deep water’ (Cent. Dict.).
