lay one's hands on

lay one's hands on (third-person singular simple present lays one's hands on, present participle laying one's hands on, simple past and past participle laid one's hands on)

1. To lay hands on.
   • 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 131/132:

     There are the engines that develop ill-health and begin to lose time, or the wagons that develop hot boxes and have to be removed, initiating delays that steadily pile up—or at worst, the weather lays its hand on the whole District.

   • 2013 January 11, Tom Shone, The Guardian‎:

     Perhaps the best news to come out of the nominations was the brightened box-office prospects for such films as Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, a dazzling piece of magic realism pieced together from just $1.8m, some rusty bathtubs and whatever Louisiana bric-a-brac its youthful collective of film-makers could lay their hands on.

• “lay one's hands on”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.