the lay of the land

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“I don’t understand the intricacies and nuances, the lay of the land, the psyche.”

From Los Angeles Times

"I now think of political identity as like water that's always going somewhere, that needs to go somewhere, but where it goes depends on the lay of the land, the rock formations that stand in its way," she told me.

From Salon

“The way the fire’s moving and the lay of the land, the terrain, the features, the ridge lines, we that Estes Park is not out of the woods but we feel that as the fire progresses and moves to the southeast, the way it’s moving … we do feel that the community of Estes Park is not imminently threatened or in the direct line of fire.”

From Seattle Times

So, what is Seattle’s “sense of itself”? People of all stripes likely would agree that it derives from the city’s unique lay of the land — the lyrical, physical contours that created a natural stage for urban beauty and demanded ingenuity for the shaping of a prosperous port.

From Seattle Times

That is why most baseball clubs play better on their home grounds, where they know the lay of the land, the presence of treacherous little hillocks, the usual slant of the wind, the value of sending their balls toward a certain fence where home-runs count heavily, and all that sort of thing.

From Project Gutenberg