From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishlay about somebody phrasal verb literary or old-fashionedATTACKto attack someone violently SYN set about with He laid about his attackers with a stick. → lay→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
lay about • The glacier lay about 2 miles away around a bend in the bay.• The locals still used the place as a tip, and piles of old tyres and other junk lay about.• With Miss Fingerstop, it lay about her.• They lay about higgledy-piggledy but were obviously intended to be set up as practice jumps.• Their droppings lay about like scattered handfuls of raisins.• Cod, for instance, lay about nine million eggs into the plankton.• There are a great number of myths that constantly need to be laid about school dinners.• These were anxious days in Richmond, which lay about sixty miles northwest of York town. 