Word Warrior

Since today's post is a bit rantish, I will first show you a gratuitous rooster picture.


Nice, no? OK, moving right along...

I have an alter ego, occasionally referred to by my colleagues as the Grammar Nazi; I prefer to call him Conan, the Grammarian. While recognizing that language is essentially fluid, Conan is somewhat of a fuddy-duddy; he may be related to my grandmother, who, I am told, was wont to murmur after consulting the dictionary, "They keep changing the first pronunciation to the second pronunication, but I will continue to use the correct first pronunciation."

Generally I try to keep Conan quiet, preferably comatose, since otherwise his constant squawking gives me no peace while I'm trying to read the paper. Now and then, however, especially when feeling a bit cabin-feverish at the end of a snow day, he gets the floor. Today he would like to talk about the verbs lie and lay.

Lie, meaning to recline, is intransitive: I lie, am lying, lay, have lain down to sleep.

Lay, meaning to place or put, is transitive: Conan lays, is laying, laid, has laid it on the line.

No doubt the confusion stems from the fact that lay is a past tense of lie. These days lay gets used as its own past tense and as the present tense of lie; I haven't heard anyone outside my immediate family say lain in I don't know how long.

So, my friends, I beg you, for Conan's sanity: if you want to say lay, but can't answer the question "lay what?", you probably want lie. If you want to say lie, to mention that you're lying something down, you want lay.

If you're still here, you may at this point be wondering about "Now I lay me down to sleep..." — but not to worry. Lay what? Lay me. No lie.