Lie and lay

Is it lie or lay, lying or laying, lay or laid, or lain?

Those pairs often cause confusion. People sometimes use lay when they meant laid, or lying when it should be laying. For concreteness, here are some examples to illustrate:

(1) He laid on the sofa all morning.
(2) Laying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.
(3) After a while, we lie down and rest.
(4) That hen has just lain an egg.

Can you spot the ones that are wrong?

As a student, I had this little chart that I referred to whenever I was in doubt. It isn't as neat as the one below, but it had served me well.

Base form	Meaning	Past tense	Present participle	Past participle
Lie	To recline	lay	lying	lain
Lie	To tell an untruth	lied	lying	lied
lay	To put or place	laid	laying	laid
lay	To produce eggs	laid	laying	laid

There are a number of things to note from the table. Firstly, the conjugated form lain is used only as the past participle of the verb to lie (to recline). This is a useful fact to remember, to help narrow the choices in troublesome cases.

Secondly, both the present participles of lie are the same form lying, but their past tense and past participle forms differ. Specifically, lay is orthographically different from lied, and lain from lied.

Lastly, and this is arguably the one causing the most confusion, the past tense of to lie (to recline) - lay - is spelt the same way as the present tense of to lay.

Let's go through each of the four sentences above.

(1) He laid on the sofa all morning.

Looking at the table, laid is the past tense and the past participle of lay for both to put or place, and to produce eggs, neither of which is suitable. The correct word is lay, the past tense of to lie (to recline).

Correction: He lay on the sofa all morning.

(2) Laying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.

Laying is wrong because the intended meaning is to be on a horizontal position. The correct word is lying, the present participle of to lie.

Correction: Lying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.

(3) After a while, we lie down and rest.

Lie is correct because the intended meaning is to recline and rest.

(4) The hen has just lain an egg. If we remember lain as the only past participle of the verb to lie (to recline), we can rule this as wrong. The correct past participle is laid.

Correction: The hen has just laid an egg.