“Lay Lady Lay” – Or Is It “Lie”?

What if Bob Dylan had sung “Lie Lady Lie”? Or Eric Clapton had sung “Lie Down Sally”? Or the Backstreet Boys had sung “Lie Down Beside Me”?  Well, they

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

would have been grammatically correct. And maybe if we had first heard the songs that way, they wouldn’t sound so weird. Did the songwriters know they were making a grammatical error? Did they care? Did they think about it and use what sounded better? 

Who knows? But after reading this blog post, you will know which to use, and not only in the present tense, but in the past and present perfect tenses as well. Not that anyone uses lie in the present perfect . . .

The main distinction between lie and lay is that lie is intransitive in grammar speak, and lay is transitive. So lie does not take a direct object (a receiver of the action), but lay does. In other words, you must lay something. Here are some examples of correct uses of lay and lie. Note that animals and things can also lie, not just people:

I think I will lie down.
She is lying in the sun.
The dog always lies on that blanket.
I like to collect the shells that lie on the beach.
Lay your head on my shoulder. (Lay what? Lay your head.)
You can lay your purse on the table. (Lay what? Lay your purse.)
Every time he comes over he lays himself on the hammock. (Lays what? – who? in this case – Lays himself.)
Lay those books on my desk. (Lay what? Lay those books.)

So you get the idea. You don’t lay down. You lie down. 

It gets a little trickier in the past tense:

The past tense of lie is lay.
The past tense of lay is laid, which makes more sense.

Here are some examples of correct past tense:

Yesterday, I lay on the sofa all day.  (not laid)
She visited last week, and lay out in the sun most of the time.  (not laid)
He laid the cookies on the table.
I laid the pumpkin on the floor, so we could carve it. 

The present perfect tense is the one with the helping verb has or have. 

The present perfect (also called past participle) of lie is lain — the one no one knows what to do with!
The present perfect (also called past participle) of lay is laid, just like the past tense: easy.

Here are some examples of correct perfect tenses:

I have lain out in the sun all day and have a sunburn.
Those rocks have lain in that pile for months.
Soon she will have lain in that bath so long, she will look like a prune.
I have laid all my cards on the table.
We have laid tile before, so we can help you.

So . . .

It is lie, lay, have lain

It is lay, laid, have laid

 

Be sure to catch my “ditty of the day” on social media if you follow me – every day I post on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Facebook (personal and business). I change it up every month. This month I have been posting a comma rule every day. Next month I will be posting words that begin with — oh, I don’t want to give it away!