LIE, LADY, LIE

by James Lincoln Warren

Probably long before Bob Dylan violated the rules of diction with his ballad “Lay, Lady, Lay” back in 1969’s Nashville Skyline, people seem to have lost all awareness of the distinction between “lie” and “lay”—two completely different words with different meanings. Not too long ago I watched a medical show on TV, and four different people said “lay” instead of “lie” (e.g., “I told her to go lay on the bed” instead of “I told her to go lie on the bed”), and nobody used “lie” at all. (There is, of course, another meaning to “lay” which denotes sexual congress, but we are not concerned with that here, just as there is another verb “lie” which means to prevaricate, and we don’t care about that either.) These are matters of willful ignorance and have no excuse—everybody should know better.

But they don’t. Even as wonderful a writer as the brilliant Lisa Scottoline, whom I adore with my every breath, once said to me, “I don’t get the difference between lie and lay.” Of course, she may have been pulling my leg, since she has an impish sense of humor and knows that I’m a Diction Cop with OCD. On the other hand, she’s warm and open and friendly as only an Philly Italian can be, and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t love her to distraction.

Of course, now the Gentle Reader will have another weapon in the arsenal of Weapons Designed to Bug JLW, by deliberately using “lay” when “lie” is called for and vice versa. I can think of one person, at least, who will be unable to resist. But I am a martyr to my cause.

Here are the Official Criminal Brief Conjugation Tables for “to lie” and “to lay”. I haven’t included so-called imperfect or progressive forms of tenses, i.e., “I am lying down” (present progressive) or “I was lying down” (past imperfect), because those aren’t actually separate tenses, being rather variations of tense, and the Gentle Reader can certainly figure them out on the GR’s own.

Lie

“Lie” is an intransitive verb that acts upon the subject. It means to assume a prone or supine position, usually on an indirect object. It is conjugated as follows:

Lay

“Lay” is a transitive verb that acts upon a direct object. It means to set something, a direct object, on some sort of surface, an indirect object. It is conjugated as follows:

And there you have it.

So why does it matter? Aside from the fact that there is such a thing as getting things right for their own sake, this misusage is one of the primary keys I can think of for providing an impression of how well educated a speaker is. Replacing “lie” with “lay” used to almost always be a sign that the speaker didn’t get far past high school. Not so much these days, I’m afraid, when a lot of “college educated” people have 8th grade reading levels, but the inference can still be made. As such, from an authorial point of view, it speaks to developing character. From a reader’s point of view, it should provide a clue about who’s doing the speaking. So I have good reasons for bringing it up here.

But mostly because it drives me crazy.