Meaning & Analysis
An archaic idiom meaning to set something aside, postpone action, or neglect a matter. The imagery suggests placing an item in water, rendering it temporarily inactive or leaving it to be dealt with at a later, unspecified time.
Insights
Postponement and Neglect
The proverb primarily symbolizes the deliberate deferral or abandonment of a plan, law, or responsibility. As seen in Elyot's 1531 usage, it implies that important matters are ignored, allowing negative forces like 'affection and avarice' to take over.
Dilution of Urgency
Placing a matter 'in water' suggests that its immediacy and importance are being diluted or washed away. The issue loses its potency and is effectively neutralized through deliberate inaction or delay.
Suspended Action
Represents putting a project or intention into a state of suspension. Lyly's 1592 quote illustrates this perfectly, where war plans are halted ('laid in water') because the moment for execution has been lost to indecisive consultation.
Historical Imagery
The phrase, now archaic, likely drew on tangible actions like soaking materials (e.g., wood, flax) to be worked on later, or perhaps the naval practice of laying up a ship. This physical act of setting something aside in a medium that renders it inert provides a powerful image for inaction.
Psychology of Inaction
The proverb captures the psychology of procrastination and indecision. Rather than actively terminating a plan, one 'lays it in water'—a passive act of neglect that allows momentum to dissipate and the issue to fade from view, as when Lyly's character replaces execution with consultation.
Legal and Political Critique
The 1531 citation by Elyot—'The lawes layde in water'—demonstrates the proverb's use as a sophisticated tool for political critique, powerfully illustrating how justice and equity can be intentionally sidelined by corrupting influences.
Rhetorical Devices
Idiomatic Metaphor
The entire phrase functions as an idiomatic metaphor where 'water' symbolizes a state of neglect or suspension. Its power comes from transforming an abstract concept (postponement) into a concrete, physical image.
Archaism
The expression's obsolete nature now serves as a distinct stylistic marker of early modern English literature, lending historical flavor and a sense of gravity to the texts in which it appears.
Sensory Imagery
The image of water provides a sensory quality, suggesting a 'cooling off' of a heated issue or the stagnation of a once-active plan.
Transcription
Quotations
And care not thoughe the matter Were clerely layde a watter.
The lawes layde in water (as is the prouerbe), affection and avarice subduinge iustice and equitie.
The prouerbes, which I before them dyd lay, The triall therof we wyll lay a water, Tyll we trie more.
My matter is leyde a water, thats a false tale: Thy matters lie not in water, they lie in ale.
If he had broke his arm .. either Apollo must have played bonesetter, or euery occupation beene laide a water.
I see all his expeditions for warres are laid in water: for now when he should execute, he begins to consult.
Explanation
[To lay aside.]
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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