Lie, Lay, Lied and Laid


by Michael Chan - Date: 2007-03-25 - Word Count: 304 Share This!

My wife and I took on a translation job recently (we translated a Chinese novel into English). As usual, she did the first translation draft, while I polish up the prose (some Chinese concepts and words do not translate well to English, so prose changes are necessary in such changes). In the process of translation, she encountered many cases of the use of lie, which has also confused my pupils in the past. I had to keep making changes when editing her translation.

Now, when are all the lie, lay, lied and laid used? The hurdle to cross in understanding how it all works lies (yea, a pun) in this one very important concept - lie and lay are words which are homographs* within of themselves.

When lie is used to mean "tell something untruthful deliberately", both the simple past and the past participle form is lied.

Johnny has lied before to his mother and he lied again to her yesterday. Yes, he lies.

When lie is used to mean "relax on one side of the body", the simple past form is lay and the past participle form is lain.

My wife has lain with me for 12 years. My son John snuggled and lay with me in bed this morning. Right now, I am trying to get my firstborn Paul to lie down and sleep!

When lay is used to mean "deliver something on the ground", both the simple past and the past participle form is laid.

Chickens have laid eggs for years. Today, they lay them in huge factories, in terrible conditions. It is so different from just a hundred years ago, when they laid them in free ranging farms.

Hopefully my post would clear up some confusion, and be helpful to users of English! All these from your friendly neighbourhood English teacher.

*I wrote about this in my blog Sensei Michael


Related Tags: lie, lay, lied, laid, homographs, tenses

Michael Chan used to be a teacher, before he left to run a managed fund. When his business failed, he returned to teaching, and is currently a Department Head at the Shanghai Singapore International School.

He constantly applies his business acumen to his job, to add value to his employer. His thoughts on K-12 education and on financial education can be found in his blog at http://www.senseimichael.com

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: