Laid - lay - lie - lied

Laid/Lay/lie/lied are verbs that are often confused in many dialects of English. In academic English, any such confusion is regarded as a sign of illiteracy. Don’t confuse them.

To lie has two meanings.

• It can mean ‘to say something that is not true’. In this sense, the past tense (i.e. when you want to say “yesterday”) is lied. (“He told me he was rich, but he lied.”) The past participle (which is used with ‘have’, etc) is the same: “he has lied.”

• More usually, to lie means to stretch oneself out horizontally – as on a bed. The past tense is lay. “I was feeling ill, so I lay down for an hour.”) In this sense, the verb is intransitive – that is, you can only lie down yourself. You cannot lie anyone else down. The past participle is lain (“The ruined statue has lain in the desert for a thousand years.”)

• There is also a verb to lay. (Notice that the present tense of this verb is the same as the past tense of to lie.) It is a transitive verb – it is the word to use when you want to make something (or someone) else lie down, and some other related meanings. A porter might lay down his burden; a hen might lay an egg; a waiter might lay a table; and a killer might lay his victim down on the ground. The past tense of this is laid.

(In slang, this is the verb used informally to mean “have sexual intercourse with”; Dorothy Parker once said “If all the chorus girls on Broadway were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.” This is an example of cynicism, humour and stereotyping. What a wit Dorothy Parker was!)