The Definitive Lay-or-Lie Thread

Captcha

Banned
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
4,456
Reaction score
637
I just got notes changing 'they just eat and then lie back, full and tired.' to 'they just eat and then lay back, full and tired.' I tried to investigate on line, and I think maybe it's an American colloquialism? Does this make sense to anyone? Like, 'lay back' is related to 'laid back' or something?
 

Maryn

Sees All
Staff member
Super Moderator
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
55,320
Reaction score
25,288
Location
Snow Cave
If you intend both verbs, eat and lay-or-lie, to be present tense, then lie is correct and your note-provider is flat-out wrong.

Present: They just eat and then lie back, full and tired.
Past: They just ate and then lay back, full and tired.

'Laid back' is indeed an American slang term, but it's a compound adjective, and I can't see any relation between it and what you wrote.

Maryn, laid back
 

Baboy

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 9, 2008
Messages
55
Reaction score
6
Great post. However, I don't get the comments about Bob Dylan's "Lay, Lady, Lay...". OK, I understand why it's grammatically wrong, but Dylan was writing a song, not prose. The line appears in three verses, and in two of them, requires a rhyme with the word "stay". In one case: Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed / Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile. And in the other: Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed / Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead.

Are poetry (and songwriting) now to be subject to the same restraints of grammar as prose? I am not a huge fan of either, but still, I think that would be a sad day. Cheers!
 

jinap

Aspiring Tree-Killer
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 10, 2009
Messages
109
Reaction score
14
Location
Canada
Website
www.facebook.com
One of the mnemonics I use for the lay/lie distinction is the familiar (at least for some of us) --

"Let sleeping dogs LIE."

This invokes the mental image of a dog LYING (not laying) down ... and from there, the idea of physically lying oneself down to sleep, etc.

Maryn's description is great! And perfectly laid out!

Isn't it laying oneself down? In this case, you are laying something down: yourself, thus requiring the transitive.

You lie down, but you lay yourself to sleep like the prayer says...

Edit: Yes, I do realise I'm replying 2 years too late to the comment.
 

LaurelCremant

Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
21
Reaction score
1
Location
Miami
Website
laurelcremant.blogspot.com
Okay. This post has my head spinning--not because of lay/lie but because I actually understand the explanation! This is a great post. I'm a newbie to the forum and this is the first post I've read. Now all I have to do is figure out how to print it out and post it on my wall...(is there a thread on the proper use of ellipsis?)

Laurel
 

Gina Blechman

Registered
Joined
Mar 4, 2011
Messages
15
Reaction score
0
Great post. I always have trouble with this. Question though: so you can lay yourself down, but you lie on the bed, yes?
 

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
43,746
Reaction score
8,652
Location
Los Angeles
Website
www.amazon.com
Isn't it laying oneself down? In this case, you are laying something down: yourself, thus requiring the transitive.

You do lay something down... but "I lay myself to sleep" is just redundant, IMHO. Why not just "I lie down to sleep" or "I sleep"?
 

Reziac

Resident Alien
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 20, 2010
Messages
7,451
Reaction score
1,177
Location
Brendansport, Sagitta IV
Website
www.offworldpress.com
I was told by a dog lover that over a century ago a semi-universal set of dog commands got worked out by the British and the American kennel clubs respectively. The commands included (among others): .

The professional dog trainer (with 40+ years experience) in the audience wishes to inform you that whoever told you this is full of BS. There is no established standard for commands (and certainly none from any kennel club), tho there are some conventions typically used. However, the conventional command is neither "lie down" nor "lay down" but rather just plain "down". Unless you're a sheepdog trainer, in which case it may be "flat".
 

Deleted member 42

Great post. I always have trouble with this. Question though: so you can lay yourself down, but you lie on the bed, yes?

Yes.

The reflexive construction, typically known via a traditional prayer ("Now I lay me down").

You lie on the bed; you may tell lies, and you might even get laid.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Trevor Bruhn

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 26, 2012
Messages
397
Reaction score
54
Location
Wetside. Wash
  • I got Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan (2005) at our library; an earlier reader had taken a pencil and made a very few amendments to the printed text, mostly picky preposition choices. Then came this sentence on p. 285 of the hardcover: [an Al-Quaida agent] "had arrived at a coastal village in northern Kenya, settled in and married a local girl, then bought a house with the diary and laid low for several years." Earlier Reader had drawn his pencil through "laid" and inserted "lay" above it. To lay low appears quite intransitive, and on the strength of this post, I have to conclude that Earlier Reader wins the point and Kaplan (now on the Atlantic's masthead as a national correspondent) and the Random House editors missed one. In what is an excellent book, withal.
  • Cheers, Trevor
 

F.E.

Sockpuppet
Banned
Joined
Jan 24, 2012
Messages
637
Reaction score
106
I got Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan (2005) at our library; an earlier reader had taken a pencil and made a very few amendments to the printed text, mostly picky preposition choices. Then came this sentence on p. 285 of the hardcover:
[an Al-Quaida agent] "had arrived at a coastal village in northern Kenya, settled in and married a local girl, then bought a house with the diary and laid low for several years."
Earlier Reader had drawn his pencil through "laid" and inserted "lay" above it. To lay low appears quite intransitive, and on the strength of this post, I have to conclude that Earlier Reader wins the point and Kaplan (now on the Atlantic's masthead as a national correspondent) and the Random House editors missed one. In what is an excellent book, withal.

Cheers, Trevor
A couple of quick comments. :) ... (bolding and underlining in the above excerpt is mine)

#1) diary -- most likely a typo (in the original publication or in the copying by OP?), it probably ought to be "dowry".

#2) laid -- might be a typo or maybe not; perhaps it ought to be either the simple past-tense "lay" or the past participle "lain".
That is: had arrived, (had) settled in, (had) married, then (had) bought, (had) lain low / (or "lay low" if this and the previous verb were meant to be in simple past-tense).
BUT, if the author had intended to use an "intransitive lay", then his usage of "laid" (for either as a simple past-tense or as a past-participle) is correct.

#3) to lay low -- Perhaps the idiomatic usage they were relying on is from "to lie low". (Which you--the OP--was probably pointing out, as Kaplan's usage did seem to be wanting an intransitive sense.)
In my computer's dictionary, New Oxford American Dictionary, for the entry LIE is the idiom "(to) lie low":
lie low (esp. of a criminal) keep out of sight; avoid detection or attention : at the time of the murder, he appears to have been lying low in a barn.
But then, if that excerpt was from heavily voiced narrative or from dialogue, then that possible (mis)use of laid (for lain or lay) might have been intentional. (Also, see my previous comment #2.)
.
.
Historically, there has been some overlap in usage with the verbs lie and lay; for instance, the use of an "intransitive lay" has been rather not uncommon a couple of centuries ago and it is still somewhat not uncommon in present-day speech. Though nowadays, this forcing a separation between the two verbs--forcing lie to be mostly intransitive in meaning and lay to be mostly transitive--is sort of used as an educational or social shibboleth by many people. This issue is taken up in more detail in a usage dictionary, and does make some interesting reading, maybe.

(Aside: My usage dictionary mentions an old use of "lay" with a reflexive pronoun that has the same meaning as lie down: "Now I lay me down to sleep." It also has included an interesting excerpt: ... I laid me down flat on my belly--Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719. And the usage dictionary continues with: "Evans says that the pronoun dropped out but was understood, giving intransitive lay. Then we have some idioms in which lay functions intransitively: ...")

I mean, if someone was really interested in this issue of "lie vs lay". :)
 
Last edited:

Maryn

Sees All
Staff member
Super Moderator
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
55,320
Reaction score
25,288
Location
Snow Cave
My interpretation is pretty simple.

[an Al-Quaida agent] "had arrived at a coastal village in northern Kenya, settled in and married a local girl, then bought a house with the diary and laid low for several years."

Okay, admittedly I need context for what the word diary was supposed to be. (Dowry is my guess.) But I've got no problem with the phrase laid low. I read the word had as joining each verb. He had arrived, had settled, had married, had bought, and had laid low. If the surrounding text is past tense and these conditions are completed, already in place as the action of the surrounding text unfolds, then laid with the implied inclusion of had, is correct.

Maryn, still stymied by diary, though
 

Deleted member 42

My interpretation is pretty simple.

[an Al-Quaida agent] "had arrived at a coastal village in northern Kenya, settled in and married a local girl, then bought a house with the diary and laid low for several years."

Okay, admittedly I need context for what the word diary was supposed to be. (Dowry is my guess.) But I've got no problem with the phrase laid low. I read the word had as joining each verb. He had arrived, had settled, had married, had bought, and had laid low. If the surrounding text is past tense and these conditions are completed, already in place as the action of the surrounding text unfolds, then laid with the implied inclusion of had, is correct.

Maryn, still stymied by diary, though

I agree.

I'd probably revise "diary" to "her dowry."
 

Trevor Bruhn

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 26, 2012
Messages
397
Reaction score
54
Location
Wetside. Wash
Sorry about diary, it was indeed dowry, my bobble. Kaplan was describing an island off the Kenya coast where he had been embedded with a small detachment of U.S. Marines. Here are the opening two sentences of the paragraph.
"This is a region," Robeson told me, "where young al-Qaeda operatives drift into towns and villages, get established, marry local girls, and go to ground." Saleh Nabhan, a key operative in the 2002 attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and of the surface-to-air missile launched at an Israeli airliner from Mombasa, fit that description perfectly: one day he had arrived at a coastal village near Lamu Island in northern Kenya, settled in and married a fifteen-year-old local girl, then bought a house with the dowry and laid low for several years.

I think Maryn is right about the "had" modifying each verb after "arrived". Which would make the proper conjugation of "to lie" be lain.
Cheers, Trevor
 

Maryn

Sees All
Staff member
Super Moderator
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
55,320
Reaction score
25,288
Location
Snow Cave
Every now and then I'll think I've actually learned this stuff, until I check my usage against this thread. Ha!

Maryn, knowing she will never truly master it
 

Nekko

Back to purring
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
2,602
Reaction score
565
Location
In a quiet corner, on fluffy cushions
Website
www.gericopitch.com
I didn't know about this sticky. Thanks Kon for finding it and bringing it back to the surface. I'm going to print out Maryn's first post and keep it with my 'filtering no-nos'!

Nekko, who admires Maryn for her many words of wisdom.
 

Kon_Tagion

Epic mediocrity abounds
Registered
Joined
Jun 26, 2013
Messages
13
Reaction score
1
Location
Midwest, land of concrete and cornfields
Hmm... I found this thread in a search, saw that it was stickied and just thought I'd comment. I had no intention of necro posting. Sorry, as I am new here, I am not sure how frowned-upon that is.
 

Nekko

Back to purring
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
2,602
Reaction score
565
Location
In a quiet corner, on fluffy cushions
Website
www.gericopitch.com
Hmm... I found this thread in a search, saw that it was stickied and just thought I'd comment. I had no intention of necro posting. Sorry, as I am new here, I am not sure how frowned-upon that is.

Usually if the person who started the thread really wants it to end, they lock it. This isn't a hard and fast rule. Most posts on SYW are never locked, but if no one's posted on it in months, consider those dead - unless invited to check it out by the author.

This is a sticky, it's meant to be read.

So many excellent posts have been put up over the years. They ebb and flow in popularity as other things come to the fore. You didn't do bad. :)