The word lay, on the other hand, is a transitive verb showing the act of putting or placing something or someone in a particular position or location. (An intransitive verb cannot take an object, that is, a noun cannot directly attach itself to the word lie.) Quite simply, the word lie is an intransitive verb showing that someone or something is in a reclining position. From a nursery school poem: Hens lay, but little girls lie.The vast majority of people butcher these two words. Now English wouldn’t be English without a little ambiguity somewhere. And of course, as demonstrated above, hens lay eggs.Īnd then we have I got laid last night, but if you want to know the meaning of that, I'm not going to explain it here. Also, many recipe books can ask you to lay (the cake/bread) on a rack and stand in a cool place. If you ‘lay on something’ it is a colloquialism meaning ‘to provide something’: Let’s lay on a party! We should lay on a meal for six. Otherwise, you could get this response: What did you lay on the floor? An egg? You have to have laid something on the floor. But I laid on the floor is not a complete sentence as the verb requires an object. You cannot say ‘I lay something on the floor yesterday’, but you say 'I lay on the sofa when I'm tired'. The verb ‘lie’ (as in to lie on the floor, lay being the past tense) is intransitive, meaning it cannot take a direct object. Note that if you say I lay on the floor, this means that that this is a completed action of having been on your back on the floor. And to confuse things further, the continuous/progressive form of lie is lying, the same spelling as to be in your horizontal position on the floor: You're lying! You were laying your towel on the beach and lying on it and you told me you were ill and had to stay at home! I'm afraid I’ve taken your towel and I’ve already laid it on the beach and lain on it!’ 'You're not lying, are you?' replied Daria nervously.Īnd as you may have read, there is also the verb ‘lie’ meaning ‘not tell the truth’, but this is lie/lied/lied. ‘Which one?’ replied Julie, ‘you don't mean the green one?’ ‘Yes!’ said Daria. 'What's up?' after she started lying on it. An hour later, she laid her towel on the beach. Then her phone rang as she thought about laying on it it was Daria. ‘I’m going to lay a towel on the beach and then lie on it to get a suntan,’ Julie explained to her friend, Daria, who was in the kitchen. Here’s another example of how they could be used: It's very comfortable! Yesterday I lay on the soft carpet and it gave me no back problems. I have lain on many soft carpets in my time but this one really feels comfortable on my back! The continuous/progressive form: Stop lying in your bed and get up and do something! Lie - Present tense (infinitive): lie Past tense: lay Past participle: lain: Lie on the soft carpet. The continuous/progressive form: Your clothes are laying all over the floor! One hour ago I laid a wet towel on the radiator and now it's dry! I have laid a lot of wet towels on the radiator, so hopefully they'll be dry soon. Lay - Present tense (infinitive): lay Past tense: laid Past participle: laid: Lay the wet towel on the radiator. I can demonstrate this further with these examples: The present tense form is lie, and its past form is lay. The second has the meaning ‘to be in a more or less horizontal position’. The first is with the meaning ‘to place in a more or less horizontal position’. Its present tense form is lay, and its past and past participle forms are both laid. The main problem is the word lay, as there are two forms of the verb but are spelt the same. And I am in distinguished company: even The Times newspaper gets the verb forms mixed up (Kamm, 2015, p211, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson). I have to admit that, until I decided to write about this and then add it to this section, the differences between these words and the participle form they take had even confused me.
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