waylay

Etymology

From way + lay, likely a calque of Middle Dutch wegelagen (“besetting of ways, lying in wait with evil or hostile intent along public ways”). Compare Middle Low German wegelagen, German wegelagern (“to waylay; rob”).

verb

1. (transitive) To lie in wait for and attack from ambush.
2. (transitive) To accost or intercept unexpectedly.
   And when some of the friends, the ones who came every day, waylaid the doctor in the corridor, Stephen was the one who asked the most informed questions, who’d been keeping up not just with the stories that appeared several times a week in the Times […] 1986-11-24, Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now”, in The New Yorker