Ken Lay lied but sadly died before incarceration, and was laid to rest.
You don’t lay down for a rest, you lie down for a rest. Nobody I know talks of “having a lay down”, you have a lie down.
But the confusion comes from the fact that the past tense of “lie” is “lay”. So yesterday you lay down, and you could have lain in bed all day.
The verb “to lay” has nothing to do with it.
I think they do “lay down to rest” in American English. It certainly sounds American to my ears.
Either you’re lying :), or the population in your neck of the woods has their own dialect that doesn’t observe the distinction. But if what you said is true, that hardly anybody uses “lie” to mean recline or rest, I wouldn’t have gotten 2,180,000 Google hits for the phrase “lie down.”
My own experience is that, while the incorrect usage is rampant, it’s still not as common as the correct one. And misuse of “lay” grates on my ears every time I hear it, even though it is common.
So, as a “grammar dictator,” you’re going to enforce bogus rules but not legitimate ones?
I know that that’s the rule, but here in the States it is rarely observed in ordinary speech (which is what I was referring to*, Thudlow, not the written word). BTW, I got 2,580,000 for “lay down,” proving once again that Google doesn’t prove anything.
But IME, a vast majority of Americans will say (if not write), “I’m going to lay down,” rather than “lie down.” And I’m tired of trying to correct them.
*As you can see, I know that split infinitives and terminal prepositions are bogus rules. I was kidding. And I’m not really a dictator, either. Sheesh!
So did I, but I didn’t know any way of sorting out how many of those were the (correct) past tense of “lie” (e.g. “Yesterday I lay down for a nap”), how many used the word “lay” (correctly) with a direct object (e.g. “lay down the law”), and how many used “lay down” incorrectly when “lie down” would have been correct.
But I will grant you that Google doesn’t prove anything.