The difference between lie and lay.

This is a fine point of English usage that escapes a surprising number of native English speakers. Yet lie and lay are different kinds of verbs and should not be used in the same way. (We are not discussing the meaning of the verb to lie which can also signify saying something that is not true) Lie in the sense of reclining or taking a horizontal position or being situated someplace is intransitive, meaning it has no object. It happens all by itself rather than causing something to happen to something or someone else. If you want a dog to lie down, you just say Lie! and you hope it will obey your command. You do not have to add the specific information Lie down on the ground since even a dog will understand where you want it to lie, since there are few choices available anyway. Once you say someone or something lies, all you have to add is information about where this is happening.

• Across the Chao Phraya river lies Wat Arun.
• About three-fourths of the drainage area of the Mekong lies within the four countries traversed by its lower basin–Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
• The province of Chiang Rai lies in the heart of the fabled Golden Triangle.
• In the reclining position, Buddha lies on his right side with his head resting in the palm of his right hand to the North.

Lay, by contrast, is a transitive verb, which means it needs an object. You have to lay something, you cannot just lay. A very good motivation to get these fine points right is that in informal English, lay can also have a rude meaning of an intimate romantic encounter, so it is especially important to use the word in the right way to avoid unintentional impoliteness.

Thailand lays backpacker murder charges against Burmese suspects.

The above headline from a British newspaper uses the verb to lay with the object murder charges, answering the question what is being laid.

China’s Peng Shuai lays down marker in Thailand.

Another headline is about a happier subject, a tennis tournament. Describing how the top seeded tennis star Peng Shuai of China easily qualified for the second round of Thailand`s Pattaya Open by beating a Russian opponent, the headline also uses lay as a transitive verb, in this case with the object being a marker. To lay down a marker is an idiom in English meaning to set a standard. If the sports headline had read instead:

China’s Peng Shuai lies down in Thailand.

This would suggest that the athlete had collapsed on the court and was unable to get up.

Thailand’s Ministry of Education Lays Out a Plan.

Still another headline, with lays as a transitive verb – something must be laid out – in this case it is a plan that is laid out or put forward.

Past and present.

The verbs also conjugate differently:

he lies

he is lying

he lay

he was lying

he has lain

Notice that to further confuse English learners, the past tense of he lies is he lay, which still does not need an object, but only the information about where he was lying, to be understandable. The fact that the same words mean different things and must be used in different ways is part of the challenge of the way languages evolve. Languages were mostly not created in a scientific way to be easy to learn and understand, except for modern attempts to devise international languages, such as Esperanto.

For lay, the conjugating is quite different:

he lays

he is laying

he laid

he was laying

he has laid

A sample sentence might be:

He laid the textbook down on the desk because it was time to go to sleep.

Here as often, if you are not exactly sure of what verb to use, you can replace it with a verb you feel more sure about without changing the meaning of the sentence:

He placed the textbook down on the desk because it was time to go to sleep.

or

He put the textbook down on the desk because it was time to go to sleep.

Let’s try these examples:

She was lying asleep in the library when it was suddenly closing time.

Since she slept instead of working on her class presentation, it may lay an egg tomorrow.

The English language idiom to lay an egg means to fail, either to fail to interest people or just fail in terms of quality. Some writers claim that this expression derives from the similar shapes of an egg and a zero (0). A slang term for a zero – with no goals or runs or points scored by a team – is a goose egg, and after the New York Stock Market crashed in 1929, one newspaper headlined the story Wall Street Lays An Egg.

So if you and your friends make a special trip to Mai Khao, Phuket you can tell them Let’s lie on the beach with confidence. If you said Let’s lay on the beach it would be bad English and might also make some people laugh as it sounds like a rude suggestion. If all of this is too much to remember, just try to recall that the verbs lie, lay, and lain all mean to recline (intransitive) while lay, laid, and laid mean to put something down (transitive).

(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).