2/17/2018 Lie and lay

• LIE & LAY

(c) King Features Syndicate

Question: Is “lay” used correctly in this cartoon? Answer below.

You'll lay an egg if you don't lie down

In general, irregular verbs are troublesome to learn. Regular verbs create their past and past
participle forms by adding “d” or “ed” to the stem of their infinitives (love, loved, loved), but irregular
verbs create past and past participle forms by altering their stems in unpredictable ways.

A number of common irregular verbs give people trouble, particularly:

dive, drown, fly, hang, lead, prove, sit, set and shrink.
But lie and lay seem to give people more difficulty than do all the other irregular verbs combined.
Here's why: The past tense form of lie is lay, so it's indistinguishable from lay in the present tense
except in usage. (Sit and set, probably the irregular verbs that give people the most trouble next to lie
and lay, for example, have no parts in common. It's sit, sat and sat but set, set, set.)

The principal parts (most-common verb forms) of lie are:

lie (present,) lay (past) and lain (past participle).

The principal parts of lay are:

lay (present), laid (past) and laid (past participle).

As an aid in choosing the correct verb forms, remember that lie means to recline, whereas lay
means to place something, to put something on something.

• Lie means that the actor (subject) is doing something to himself or herself. It's what grammarians
call a complete verb. When accompanied by subjects, complete verbs tell the whole story.
• Lay, on the other hand, means that the subject is acting on something or someone else; therefore, it
requires a complement to make sense. Thus lay always takes a direct object. Lie never does.

More on “lie”: In its simplest (command) form, when the you is implied, lie is a sentence all by
itself. If you tell your dog, “Lie,” as in “(You) lie (down),” that's a complete sentence. (The same is true,
by the way, of sit.) In written material, we generally use down with lie when we mean to recline not
because down is needed grammatically but because we wish to distinguish from the regular verb lie,
meaning to tell an untruth (as in lie, lied, lied).

http://web.ku.edu/~edit/lie.html 1/3
2/17/2018 Lie and lay

Tip: Always remember that lay is a transitive verb and requires a direct object. (A transitive verb
acts as a conveyor belt, transmitting action or influence from the subject to the object.) The common
saying, “Let's lay out in the sun,” is not only incorrect grammatically, it suggests a public promiscuity
that's frowned on even in this age of sexual permissiveness because you're implying the existence of a
direct object of lay: “Let's lay (her/him?) out in the sun.” Not that there's anything wrong with THAT!
It's just ungrammatical unless you're talking about sex.

Correct Usage:

Lie
Present tense: I lie down on my bed to rest my weary bones.
Past tense: Yesterday, I lay there thinking about what I had to do during the day.
Past participle: But I remembered that I had lain there all morning one day last week.

Lay
Present tense: As I walk past, I lay the tools on the workbench.
Past tense: As I walked past, I laid the tools on the workbench. And: I laid an egg in class when I tried
to tell that joke.
Past participle: . . . I had laid the tools on the workbench.

AN IMPORTANT TIP:
Here's an easy way to get it right — every time — without remembering all that gobbleygook
above.
When you bump into a lie-lay conundrum — when you aren't absolutely, 110 percent sure — do this
quick little exercise.*
Write these six words — “lie, lay, lain” (to recline); then beside or below them — “lay, laid, laid” (to
place or put down).
When students do that (I see it on the sides of their quizzes), they never — underline “never”— get it
wrong.
Simple, but it works. I call it the Michiko Sato rule.

The Michiko Sato Rule

I call this “The Michiko Sato Rule” because she invented that quick little way to make sure she
always got it right in quizzes and exercises (and life).
When Michiko, who is now married and a mother living in Tokyo, was a student here, she would
always write six words — three atop the other three — on her quizzes and exercises (we did 'em on
paper then).

Lie Lay Lain

Lay Laid Laid

And she never got 'em wrong. Never!

I, therefore, being the smart guy that I am, developed the theory that if it worked for a student whose
first language was Japanese, it would work for everyone. Give it a try.

Answer to “Zits” question: Oh, it should be “lie” as in “recline”; otherwise, he'd be

http://web.ku.edu/~edit/lie.html 2/3
2/17/2018 Lie and lay

putting “low” somewhere or %@#&-ing it.

Updated Oct. 4, 2012

Home

http://web.ku.edu/~edit/lie.html 3/3