Rescue "Lie" from "Lay"

           Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan crooning "Lay Lady Lay" and Eric Clapton "Lay Down Sally" killed (not ‘nailed’) it. Exercise and yoga gurus since Richard Simmons, exhorting us to “lay down” on our mats, have killed it, too. With our internet world proliferating errors, misinformation, self-incorrections, and typos, it's not likely that the distinction between "lie" and "lay" will survive.  And language is a vital organ—it changes and grows.  The word “cunt” used to be a word to designate a powerful woman—it is now a damning slur.  The word “peruse” used to mean a process of thoroughly reading through—it now means ‘to skim.’ “Bad” meant ‘bad.’ “Killer” meant a murderer, now a triumphant act.  Some changes and amplifications in meaning have been more fortunate, as in “gay,” meaning ‘happy’ coming to mean ‘homosexual’; and “fun,” which originally meant to cheat or deride, now meaning pleasure.  You can check these out at 13 Words That Switched from Negative to Positive and Vice Versa.

The above Spellzone chart and innumerable Googleable sites offer examples of how to distinguish the two main uses of “lie”—‘to tell an untruth’ and to ‘recline’—from ‘lay,’ which means ‘to set something down.’  “Lie” is an intransitive verb—the action does not perform anything onto an object.  Present tense “lay” is a transitive verb—it’s an action practiced on some object.

I understand why the distinction between “lie” and “lay” has collapsed.The problem is that the present tense ‘lay’ is also the past tense of ‘lie.’  So when “lay” is used as a command, it’s a distortion which roughly becomes a past tense imperative—'have lain down.’  (I know—no one under 30 today has ever heard the past perfect “lain” either.)  Past tense imperatives make no sense, are nonsense, as the imperative is an invitation/command to future, not past, action.

Furthermore, the past tense of “lie” is “lay.”  The past tense of “lay” is “laid.” Because the word “down” usually follows “laid”—as in “I laid down the book” (notice that “laid” transfers action to an object, the book), the tendency is to mistake the expression for “lay down,” eliding the two contiguous “ds.”  So what becomes imprinted is another error—that “lay” is the past tense of “lay.” 

To complicate things further, the word “lay” is also a noun meaning ‘a short song’ (although it’s an archaic use) and a position (as in ‘lay of the land’). It’s also what one might get while lying in bed with someone else as in “needs a lay,” or a verb designating what one does there “laid him/her.”

Dylan’s song, if interpreted through the lens of these reflections is a past tense imperative to abed someone—an impossibility. It would have been seriously more textured if he sang “Lie Lady Lie”—with the double entendre of “lie down” and “tell me an untruth.” Every time I hear that chorus, I keep asking “lay what, Bob?  Lay what?”  And Clapton’s “Lay down Sally, rest you in my arms” evokes, for me, “lay down your arms,” as in ‘give up the fight.’ Perhaps that’s the point—lay down your resistance.  But “lie” down was clearly intended—it was just another misuse of “lay.”

When I hear “lay” misused, I also recall another meaning of the word “lay”: ‘uneducated, non-professional, common.’  Don’t be that. 

So when I’m rising up (don’t get me started on the rise/raise fiasco) out of a facedown dog position in yoga class, and my instructor invites us to “lay down,” I fight back.  I will not be rewired.  “Lie down,” I whisper, although inaudibly, “Lie down.”  When I hear the word used in its original sense, I thumbs-up or air-five the person. Perhaps we can still separate the past tense of “lie” from its parasitic twin, the present tense “lay.” Perhaps we can resuscitate “lie” by red penning a misused present tense “lay” when we read it. Repeat after me: 

                  "Lie, lay, lain. Lie, lay, lain."

                  "Lay, laid, laid.  Lay, laid, laid."

                  “Lie down!” “Lie down!” “Lie down! "Lie!!!"

Works Cited:

13 Words That Switched from Negative to Positive and Vice Versa.

Visual by Spellzone.com