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Hy. As part of my mandatory community service for excessive loitering...
...I'm here to answer your grammer questions. Today's question is from a tenth grade English teacher in Colorado.
To keep the idenity of the letter writer secret, Karen our Australian robot will read the letter for you.
We've been getting lots of requests for this lately, so let's look at the difference between Lay and Lie!
[Crunching]
Hey. What are you eating there?
Oh. I'm just enjoying some Lay's potato chips.
That brings us to our first point.
Lay is a potato chip manufacturer founded in 1938 that produces a variety of snack foods, not just limited to chips.
They also make Fritos, Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos and Rold Gold pretzels. To Lie is something very different. Here, watch.
Oy, Laddy. I'm on yer team.
Really? I thought all my teammates were dead.
Nah. I'm still here. Let's win this thing.
Oh, okay.
[High-pitched scream]
Oy, laddy. Turn around.
There you have it. Lay is a potato chip, and to lie is to tell someone something that isn't true.
There are many forms of lying, which include Fabrication, Bold-faced lie, lying by omission...
white lie, noble lie, emergency lie, perjury, bluffing, misleading, contextual lies, promotional lies, and platitude.
Hey Roland... what did you say about a platypus?
I didn't. I said platitude. It means lying to children.
Like schools do?
Exactly.
Why are you talking about lying anyway?
For the grammar lesson. We got a letter asking about when people should use lie or lay.
[Silence]
What?
You are such an idiot.
Forget everything Roland just told you. The words lay and lie don't refer to potato chips or platypuses.
Platitudes!
Moving on. Lie and Lay both refer to setting down or reclining, but in different forms. Let's start with the present tense.
In the present tense, you use lie in a sentence when there is no direct object. For instance, I lie down.
You can lie down on a sofa, buy you cannot lay down on a sofa, because lay is used when there is a direct object. For instance, I lay down my weapon.
There are plenty of creative ways to remember this part. For instance, when I'm trying to remember it, I use the phrase lay it on me, because-
I laid it on your mom! [BOOM!]
Actually, Roland has a point. When he said he laid it on my mom, he was using the past tense of lay. Past tense can be tricky.
In the past tense, the words change. Lie, used when the sentence lacks a direct object, becomes lay.
What? That doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, it's pretty confusing. In the present tense, you would say I lie down, but in the past tense, you would say I lay down.
So what do you say when there's a direct object?
Good question buddy!
In the present tense, lay is used in a sentence like I lay a pencil down.
But in the past tense, lay doesn't stay lay, because lie becomes lay. Lay becomes laid.
Alliteration King!
So in the past tense, I would say I laid the pencil down. To sum it all up...
lie is used when you talk about lying down or reclining, and lay is used when you talk about putting something down.
In the past tense, these two words become lay and laid.
Got it?