Another Lie-Lay Post

I’m cleaning out my saddlebags, and this two-year-old goody turned up. If you read this blog with any regularity at all, you probably have the lay-lie problem down pat, but here’s a comic about it, so I’ll share.

The strip is called Pickles.

Remember, lie is intransitive. That means you can use it all by itself. Lay is transitive, which means it has to have a direct object. When you go to bed, you lie down. You can lay your head on the pillow, though. Lay the stick on the fire. Now it lies on the coals. So far so good.

So far this has all been in the present tense. The problem is when we get to the past tense. The past tense of lie is lay! So you have to watch the context to figure out the tense. For example,

Yesterday he lay on the couch all day.

Doesn’t sound right, does it? Lots of verbs put a –d at the end for the past tense, and we’re used to hearing that, so we tend to put a -d on the end of lie, but lied is already taken! it’s the past tense of lie meaning to tell an untruth, as in the comic. Maybe the solution is to try use the past progressive:

Yesterday he was lying on the couch all day.

Or the past perfect,

Yesterday he had lain on the couch all day.

Lay isn’t so bad. Its past tense is laid. There’s that -d to make a past tense verb:

He laid his head on the pillow.

Practice, and you’ll get the hang of it. Jot yourself a note and tape it to the wall where you can look at it whenever you want a reminder.

Lie Lay, Lain. Lie on the bed.

Lay Laid, Laid. Lay your head.

Maybe you want to sleep on it.

PS: Wouldn’t you know, Pickles had a follow-up: