Word Watch: Lay

‘Kwan lay the atlas down on the floor and reached up as if to an overhead locker. She unfolded a make-believe coat and lay it on her sister’s lap’ – Rory Maclean, Under the Dragon, 1998 

‘It is possible the painting was created as the Egyptian Mamluk army was approaching the city – or as they lay siege to it – as a plea for divine intervention.’ –  The Art Newspaper, May 2023 

This is one of the oldest muddles, and certainly one of the most confusing, if the number of times I come across it is any indication. Writers of all degrees of ability, including highly literate ones, are caught out by the interlocking permutations of the two verbs ‘to lay’ and ‘to lie’.

First, one – ‘to lie’ – is intransitive and may take a proposition: ‘I lie down’ (present); ‘I lay down’ (past). The other – ‘to lay’ – is transitive, and takes a direct object: ‘the hen lays an egg’ (present); ‘the hen laid an egg’ (past). Slightly different is the idiomatic phrase ‘to lay the table’ which denotes the disposition of objects on a table with a view to their being used in a meal. One may also, in the same way, lay a trap or a snare, the phrase denoting a deliberate act of setting something in place. Dictionaries make distinctions between ‘to lay’ as a verb denoting a gentle action, as in ‘to lay (e.g. a deceased person) to rest’ and a firmer, more decisive gesture; implying the dismissal or refutation of, say, a false hypothesis: ‘to lay a ghost’. The word also crops up in the phrase ‘lay by’ which, as a verge, means to put aside, or, with a hyphen, as a noun denoting a place where a vehicle can be parked away from passing traffic.  Let’s dispose of another, different, verb ‘to lie’, meaning to tell a falsehood, which has nothing to do with this argument. But the familiar phrase using that meaning of ‘lie’, ‘to lie in one’s teeth’ can create further confusion because it suggests a physical situation (though that is only metaphorical). 

My quotation from Rory Maclean provides a particularly vivid illustration of the problem as it crops up all too often in modern life. ‘Lay’ in both instances here should be ‘laid’. There can be no ambiguity in either case: the word in use is the past tense of the transitive verb ‘to lay’. The phrase ‘to lay siege’ (to a city) uses the same verb, though in a figurative, not a physical, sense.  So in a historical narrative we should write that the Egyptian Mamluk army ‘laid siege’ to the city. We encounter a similar use in a phrase like ‘to lie in wait’, which describes the physical act of positioning oneself in expectation of receiving something or someone, perhaps clandestinely or with the intention of producing a surprise. 

We must also take account of ‘lie’ as a noun indicating the position of something: the lie of the land, or of a snooker balls on a table. As a noun, ‘lie’ in this sense can’t be treated as a verb, with a past tense ‘lay’. It’s a particularly common mistake to substitute ‘lay’ for ‘lie’ in contexts like this, though it can sometimes be excused as a picturesque idiom in parts of the country. It more usually has the effect of making the speaker or writer seem ignorant or ill-educated – so it’s a good idea to avoid it as much as possible.  

The relevance of this note to twenty-first-century English is the definitely American usage of ‘laid’ in phrases like ‘laid back’ and ‘to get laid’. Both, like many American idioms, have sexual connotations. But ‘laid back’ can be traced back as far at least as the nineteenth century. It’s recorded, for instance, in the shanties or ‘sing-outs’ used by sailors for ‘short hauls’, brief bursts of team-work. A L Lloyd, the great historian of folk-song, gives a striking example which uses sexual imagery to conjure physical exertion: the soloist is answered by the crew with a single short yell as they pull on the sheet to tighten the sail: (solo): ‘O-ho, Jul- (chorus) –yah! (solo): Pretty Miss Jul- (chorus): -yah! (solo): Take-em off, Jul- (chorus) -yah! (solo): ‘Lay back, Jul- (chorus): yah!’ 

But that’s enough of that for the moment.

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