Lie down vs. lay down, and why my head may explode

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s not just a matter of just a few people getting this wrong, or some people getting it wrong sometimes. Literally everyone where I work (except me) gets this wrong. There’s a women from Scotland who works there who started out getting it right, but has either decided it’s a Americanism, or just capitulated, and now gets it wrong too.

I work in a preschool, and all but the oldest class take naps. When kids are fighting sleep, or just generally being obnoxious (as opposed to needing something, and we know the difference, but I’m not posting to discuss that), they get up-- they get up and stand up, or get off their cots.

The other teachers say to them “Lay down.” And they don’t say “Lay yourself down,” for the record, just “Lay down,” imperative, no object, direct or indirect.

The kids lie down when they hear it, but they lie down just the same when I say “Lie down.”

What’s up with this? why is this error so common, it is more common than the correct form?

Another word people get wrong is mixing drank and drunk in the form “she has drunk it all” to refer to finishing a drink. A lot of people say “Has drank,” and react to my saying “has drunk,” because of the association of “drunk” with alcohol.

So, you’d think that, especially when it is the incorrect version in the first place, people would react to the sexual connotation of the word “lay,” but they don’t. Literally no one but me uses it correctly, and that includes the woman who just reduced her hours to part-time because she was accepted to grad school.

This is taking place in Indiana, and I would say about half the people working here are from the area, with about half the the number left (1/4 the total) having been here a very long time. The ones not from here are from all over-- at least 7 different states by my count, and 2 other countries.

I can’t think of any other transitive/intransitive word pair that people confuse so much. They don’t say “set” for “sit,” or “raise” for “rise.” What is special about “lay” and “lie”?

2

Ahem (sorry, couldn’t resist, given the subject matter).

I have noticed the lie/lay thing happening more and more too. I think it comes down to ‘lay’ being the past tense form of lie, as well as the present tense when you’re talking about doing it to something (e.g. lay an egg). Simple as that really.

3

Well, Dylan got it wrong..I guess.

Lay, Lady, lay

4

Now do “dragged” vs “drug”.

5

Your command of English is probably better than mine, so you know that there are two closely related verbs— transitive and intransitive forms of the same action— which, naturally, sound similar, too, so why are you surprised that many people screw it up?

So now you are dealing with bad conjugation, or genuinely mixing up the preterite and present perfect; combine that with lie vs. lay, and are you surprised you get all sorts of random combinations?

PS if you cannot hear the speaker clearly, maybe it is especially difficult to distinguish lie from lay, though raise and rise, set and sit also sound equally “close” to my ear…

6

This is how language changes – according to some, how it “evolves”, and according to others, how it deteriorates and becomes less logical and less consistent (although I’m fairly sure some of us literally could care less :wink: ).

Someday in the future, children will ask their parents how come “lay” and “lie” mean the same thing, and the parents won’t have an answer.

In the meantime, we lie down to sleep, we may lie flat on our stomach, but we lay carpets, we lay hardwood floors, and we may even lay an egg.

7

Some verbs have both weak and strong forms, especially in certain dialects. Cf. also [originally distinct] verbs like ring/ringed/ringed vs ring/rang/rung

8

I am pretty sure all of us here, as well as all native and non-native students of English, are taught the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. The hypothesis is that lie and lay are especially prone to confusion compared to other pairs like set/sit. One possible explanation is that if you look at lie/lay/lain versus lay/laid/laid, there is a non-trivial intersection (“lay” occurs in both lists), which is much more confusing than sit/sat/sat vs set/set/set or rise/rose/risen//raise/raised/raised

9

I’ve met people who thought the distinction was “‘lay’ means ‘rest’, but ‘lie’ means ‘fib.’”

10

Interesting usage note:

Lay has been used intransitively in the sense of “lie”

> going to lay down for a quick nap

since the 14th century. The practice was unremarked until around 1770; attempts to correct it have been a fixture of schoolbooks ever since. Generations of teachers and critics have succeeded in taming most literary and learned writing, but intransitive lay persists in familiar speech and is a bit more common in general prose than one might suspect.

As wolfpup suggests, language changes. Part of the deterioration of language, IMO, is when people make up a brand-new rule (in the eighteenth century) by which they can tell people that the way they’re communicating is bad and wrong.

The other teachers at your preschool aren’t making an error. They’re using a word with an intended meaning, and everyone there, including you, understands that meaning. The error, I believe, is a 250-year-old error that mistakenly claims “lay” can’t have an intransitive usage.

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Every star is deaf to mine, enamoured of thy lay.

@RivkahChaya never implied it was a modern solecism :slight_smile:

If you can find some examples of mixing things up in Old English (where, again, one of the two is a strong verb and the other a weak verb, which would explain why it is the present tenses which would be most prone to confusion), that would be interesting.

12

Yep. If everyone is getting it wrong, they’re not.

13

Words of wisdom.

14

Change is inevitable, as the classic song goes:

”Video unalived the radio star.”

15

This is one of those things that may not be an error, but it’s against my own personal code of conduct. I’m not going to correct other people who use intransitive lay, but if I ever use it, feel free to correct me; and if I do so repeatedly, have me checked out for senility.

16

Indeed–their error was in believing the error is using “lay” intransitively, not in recognizing the error is in treating the intransitive “lay” as an error. It’s a 250-year-old error.

Perfectly stated.

17

I use them interchangeably. “I’m gonna go lay/lie down.” Most of the time I say the latter, which I guess is right? I should know, but this verb is one that I’ve never bothered caring about; they’re used interchangably in my dialect, and I don’t care which one is technically “right,” just whatever sounds good. And I could never remember the past forms correctly. I go about my day, and just not care.

18

As for “drank” vs. “drunk”:

English verbs have a past form, and a past participle form. For regular verbs, the ending is “(e)d” for both.

For irregular verbs, usually the two forms are distinct from each other, but in the past hundred years or so, there has been a gradual tendency to make them the same for a particular verb.

The general rule has been to change the past to look like the past participle farm — “I drank” (past) becomes “I drunk” — except when the past participle ends in “en,” in which case the past participle is changing to look like the past form (“have bitten” becoming “have bit”).

19

Because the same word has different meanings in different circumstances. It’s similar confusion to “may”/”might”, depending on whether it’s past or present tense.

20

I do, for what that’s worth.

Which, for the general society, appears to be nothing at all. I note that reaction within my own head; but I don’t bother trying to “correct” anybody about it.

No, that one’s right: the context is definitely sexual.

That is, it’s not technically right; but it’s poetically right, because he’s clearly about to lay her (and she to lay him.)