It may be the most abused verb of them all: to lie (recline). We hear people order their dogs to “lay down”; or “I am laying on the couch”; or “yesterday, I laid down for a ten minute nap”. All wrong!
The dog should lie down, you were lying on the couch, and yesterday you lay down for your nap. The tenses are lie (present), lying (participle), lay (past) and lain (imperfect, as in “he would have lain on the bed”).
The verb “to lie” (not the perjurious meaning) is intransitive, a verb of being, that is, it has no direct object. In “I threw the ball”, threw is transitive, a verb of action, because it has a direct object, the ball. All verbs are either one or the other, and our problems with the verb “to lie” relate to a similar verb which is transitive and which will be the subject of the next column.
For now: “I must lie down for a few minutes.”; “Rover, stop lying on the couch!”; “Last night I lay there worried about today’s exam.”; and “She has lain on the beach for an hour.”
The form of the verb that causes most of the trouble, lay, is to be used only in the past tense. Another verb which has nothing to do with reclining, and nothing to do with the verb to lie, is “laid” which is transitive, and its use will be part of our next topic. Remember those rules, and the rest falls into place fairly easily.
The dog should lie down, you were lying on the couch, and yesterday you lay down for your nap. The tenses are lie (present), lying (participle), lay (past) and lain (imperfect, as in “he would have lain on the bed”).
The verb “to lie” (not the perjurious meaning) is intransitive, a verb of being, that is, it has no direct object. In “I threw the ball”, threw is transitive, a verb of action, because it has a direct object, the ball. All verbs are either one or the other, and our problems with the verb “to lie” relate to a similar verb which is transitive and which will be the subject of the next column.
For now: “I must lie down for a few minutes.”; “Rover, stop lying on the couch!”; “Last night I lay there worried about today’s exam.”; and “She has lain on the beach for an hour.”
The form of the verb that causes most of the trouble, lay, is to be used only in the past tense. Another verb which has nothing to do with reclining, and nothing to do with the verb to lie, is “laid” which is transitive, and its use will be part of our next topic. Remember those rules, and the rest falls into place fairly easily.
– Ken Butera