Dear Geist,

Do you have a simple trick for writers to remember the rules on writing lie, lay, laid and/or lain?

—Cuckoo in Cornwall ON

Dear Cuckoo,

Lie and lay are irregular verbs—and how! Here is the most compact reminder we've got.

Lay (definition): to put or place something.

Present tense: She lays the hammer in the toolbox.

Past tense: She laid the hammer in the toolbox.

Present participle: She was laying the hammer in the toolbox.

Past participle: She had laid the hammer in the toolbox.

Note that lay needs not only someone to do the laying but also something to lay—a direct object (noun).

Lie (definition): to rest, recline or sleep.

Present tense: He lies down every afternoon.

Past tense: He lay down and fell asleep.

Present participle: He was still lying in bed at noon.

Past participle: He had lain there for hours.

Note that lie needs only someone to do the reclining (no direct object needed).

There are other meanings of lie, such as untruth. That's a different word, not related to the lie, lay, etc., that we're talking about here.

Another is to get laid, which doesn't fit any of the bits above. That one is an idiom, and idioms don't have to obey the rules— they are non-standard words and phrases that we understand.

Then there are bumps, such as the fact that more people say “I'm going to lay down” than “I'm going to lie down.” And they say “Let it lay” much more often than the grammatically correct “Let it lie.”

These are complex little words. Even in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, a condensed version of the big Oxfords, meanings of the word lay fill 14.5 cm of a 22 cm column, and those of lie fill 8 cm.

—The Editors