Come here and lay down? Come here and lie down?
She had laid her clothing out in preparation? She had lain…no that can’t be right!
Help!
(While you’re at it, can someone please explain when one would use “whom” as opposed to “who”?)
It’s what’s known as an irregular verb. You just have to memorize it.
You lie down.
You lay something flat. (Visualize your arms laying out a sweater to dry flat.)
However, we don’t say, After lunch she lied down. Instead, we say, She lay down for a while.
We also say, She laid the sweater out to dry. She has laid out her clothes for tomorrow.
Lain is an old-fashioned past tense for lie as in lie down. In previous eras, we would say, She has lain there for hours, is she ever going to get up? Nowadays we usually say, She has been lying there for hours, is she ever going to get up?
You use “whom” whenever Bibliophage or Tomndebb is in the thread. 
No, seriously, you use “whom” whenever it’s the object of a preposition. “To whom”, “for whom”, “about whom”. What works for me is to think, “in this instance, would I use the word ‘he’ or ‘him’ in place of the word ‘who’, and if the answer is, ‘him’, then it’s ‘whom’.” You wouldn’t say “to he”, “for he”, “about he”.
Come here and lie down. (“lay down” would work if it had a object, e.g. “lay down the book”)
She had lain out her clothing… (I am pretty sure that is correct, though perhaps not widely used.)
Who/whom - use “who” when the person to whom the pronoun refers is the subject of the sentence or clause.
I’m sure you will soon have some more detailed, and perhaps disagreeing, replies. However, what interests me is why, in the scenario you have set, is grammar going to be terribly important as the little story goes on? I mean, does all this unclothed lying down only lead to lust for linguistic knowledge?
Whom vs. who is easy - if you would use “he” or “she”, use “who”. If you’d use “him” or “her”, use “whom”.
For example:
He doesn’t like raisins.
Who doesn’t like raisins?
Take her with you.
Take whom with me?
It is he who is the murderer.
The murderer is him.
The murderer is whom?
She would post a question like this.
Who would post a question like this?
The glory belongs to him.
The glory belongs to whom?
As for lay/laid/laying/lie/lain, I’m not so positive, but here is my understanding:
One transitive verb: lay; inflected = laid, laying
This is to put something down (or about 400 other meanings - ‘lay claim to a reward’, ‘lay your clothes on the table’.
transitive means it refers to a specific object (lay your clothes out, I think)
One intransitive verb: lie; inflected = lay(!), lain, lying.
One way in which the two seem to be distinct is that when you are taking an action, you are using the ‘lay’ verb, but when something is just sitting there, you use the ‘lie’ verb. The confusing thing is that the past tense of ‘lie’ is ‘lay.’ Yuck.
Examples (to disambiguate, I’ll put lay as in past-tense-of-lie in italics):
I have to lay my clothes out on my bed.
Now that I have laid them out, they are lying on my bed.
Somone has removed my clothes. Yesterday they lay on my bed, but now they are gone. Perhaps they lie somewhere else.
My computer lies unused today, as I’m skiing. I had to lay a good foundation of excuses with my boss to get the day off. The snow is lying on the mountain. The snow lies on the mountain. I must lay into the ticket vendor who says my credit card is invalid before I can ski.
Lay yourself down. Lay your head down. Lie down.
Come here and lie down. Come here and lay your weary head to rest.
I don’t know if I can explain it much better than that, but I think I’m doing OK at using the right words.
Actually, the reason that this came up was because my friend and I had an occasion where we HAD (YKWIM) to change our children’s diapers at the same time.
She said to her son, “Come here and lie down.”
I said to my daughter, “Come here and lay down.”
I guess I was in the wrong.
Ah, but whose child obeyed?
Neither, you know toddlers.
From douglips
Normally I would let this sort of thing go, but since it is a grammar thread…
The second example is really just the same as the first. It should read, “The murderer is he,” just as the first example reads, “It is he … .” Thusly, one should choose the interrogative pronoun “who”.
As hinted at by others, “whom” is the objective case pronoun and “who” is the nominative case pronoun. Thus, if it will be the object of something, use “whom”. Else, use “who”. Things that are objects:
- object of a preposition: The money is held by whom?
- direct object: I hit him. I hit whom? Whom did I hit? (Of course, some constructions sound more weird that others, even if they are correct.)
- indirect object: Give whom the ball? (“Ball” is the direct object here.")
Other examples, just for fun:
- Whom are you going to call?
- I asked who was leaving.
- I asked him whom he called.
- Who asked me if it was I who called the man to whom I gave the ball?
-P
just to add a bit of grammer humour. when dealing with hanged vs hung, remember the following:
men are hanged,
horses are hung!
It should be “She laid out her clothing,” or “She did lay out her clothing.” I don’t think the past perfect is correct there. It was something she did once.
Exception to the rule in regards to ships. Ships lay in the harbor, not lie. There are possibly other exceptions.
At least as far as the present tense goes, “lay” takes an object, “lie” doesn’t. Hence, you lie down, but you lay your money down.
How do I remember it? Chickens lay eggs, they don’t lie eggs.
Well Sue, if you wanted the prescriptivist, here-are-the-prejudices-of-an-18th-century-grammarian answer, everyone else gave it to you. If you the descriptivist, find-out-how-everyone-says-things-and-call-that-right answer, then you were both right.
The problem with the verbs lie and lay is that they were originally one verb, but they never completely separated into two verbs. Call 'em Siamese verbs. They share so much in terms of both semantics and forms that I suspect their separation was forced. It’s unlikely that it was natural, since the average person couldn’t tell a transitive from an intransitive verb to save their life.
At any rate, as many (or more) people would use your sentence as your friend’s so a descriptivist would say that either one is correct.
I realize that I’m a lone descriptivist in a sea of prescriptivists, but someone has to fight the good fight.
There was a mailbag column on it. 