fix vs lay

fix

verb
  • To focus or determine (oneself, on a concept); to fixate. 

  • To make (a contest, vote, or gamble) unfair; to privilege one contestant or a particular group of contestants, usually before the contest begins; to arrange immunity for defendants by tampering with the justice system via bribery or extortion. 

  • To attach; to affix; to hold in place or at a particular time. 

  • To surgically render an animal, especially a pet, infertile. 

  • To render (a photographic impression) permanent by treating with such applications as will make it insensitive to the action of light. 

  • To become fixed; to settle or remain permanently; to cease from wandering; to rest. 

  • To take revenge on, to best; to serve justice on an assumed miscreant. 

  • To convert into a stable or available form. 

  • To become firm, so as to resist volatilization; to cease to flow or be fluid; to congeal; to become hard and malleable, as a metallic substance. 

  • To prevent enemy pawns from advancing by directly opposing the most advanced one with one of one's own pawns so as to threaten to capture any advancing backward pawns. 

  • To mend, to repair. 

  • To prepare (food or drink). 

  • To map a (point or subset) to itself. 

noun
  • fettlings (mixture used to line a furnace) 

  • A prearrangement of the outcome of a supposedly competitive process, such as a sporting event, a game, an election, a trial, or a bid. 

  • A repair or corrective action. 

  • A determination of location. 

  • A difficult situation; a quandary or dilemma; a predicament. 

  • A single dose of an addictive drug administered to a drug user. 

lay

verb
  • To point; to aim. 

  • To take a position; to come or go. 

  • To place down in a position of rest, or in a horizontal position. 

  • To don or put on (tefillin (phylacteries)). 

  • To have sex with. 

  • To place (new type) properly in the cases. 

  • To place and arrange (pages) for a form upon the imposing stone. 

  • To impose (a burden, punishment, command, tax, etc.). 

  • To produce and deposit an egg. 

  • To lie: to rest in a horizontal position on a surface. 

  • To apply; to put. 

  • To deposit (a stake) as a wager; to stake; to risk. 

  • To bet (that something is or is not the case). 

  • To be in a horizontal position; to lie (from confusion with lie). 

  • To present or offer. 

  • simple past tense of lie when pertaining to position. 

  • To state; to allege. 

  • To impute; to charge; to allege. 

  • To put the strands of (a rope, a cable, etc.) in their proper places and twist or unite them. 

  • To install certain building materials, laying one thing on top of another. 

  • To prepare (a plan, project etc.); to set out, establish (a law, principle). 

adj
  • Non-professional; not being a member of an organized institution. 

  • Not trumps. 

  • Not belonging to the clergy, but associated with them. 

noun
  • The direction a rope is twisted. 

  • A casual sexual partner. 

  • A lake. 

  • A ballad or sung poem; a short poem or narrative, usually intended to be sung. 

  • What was I, just another lay you can toss aside as you go on to your next conquest? 

  • Arrangement or relationship; layout. 

  • An act of sexual intercourse. 

  • A share of the profits in a business. 

  • A lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance. 

  • The laying of eggs. 

How often have the words fix and lay occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )