lay about
verb1
To strike blows in all directions.
- [...] At beating quarters up, or forage, / Behaved herself with matchless courage; / And laid about in fight more busily / Than th' Amazonian Dame Penthesile.1663, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1, canto 2:
- Alone he could have sprung into the midst of that close-packed mob, and, laying about him after the fashion of Numa, the lion, have struck the Arabs with such consternation that escape would have been easy.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 63:
2
To set about, with infinitive or gerund.
3
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see lay, about.