Definition of "lay off" []

• (of an employer) To dismiss (workers) from employment, e.g. at a time of low business volume, often with a severance package. (verb)
• (of a bookmaker) To place all or part of a bet with another bookmaker in order to reduce risk. (verb)
• To cease, quit, stop (doing something). (verb)
• To stop bothering, annoying, teasing, pestering, pressuring, being aggressive with, or hovering over someone; to leave (someone) alone. (verb)

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• "Solidly palatial brick buildings that housed the banks, stock exchanges, gambling palaces and whorehouses clustered near the scrollwork mansions of the rich away south of Market Street; clapboard boardinghouses and stores huddled in the shadows of the hills and a dense, rickety congestion of color and dirt marked where Chinatown lay off to the south."
• "It lay off the banks of Wallabout Bay between Manhattan and Long Island for several years, its moldering planks and timbers covered with thousands of names carved into the wood."
• "To make ends meet, Bert Wilson, the new president, decided to lay off part of the faculty and impose other cuts."