How do I know which word to use, lie and lay means same?

Answer 1

surely it's present and past tense...I lie down..present
I lay down...past

Answer 2

NO, the word "lie" means like not saying the truth,
and lay means to put, place, or set down.
LAY-For example she was laying on the bed.
LIE-Prisoner always lie saying they are right.

Answer 3

Lie means to tell a falsehood or to recline. Don't lie in the sun too long.
Lay and laid take a direct object. I will lay the book on the table. Yesterday, the hen laid an egg.

Answer 4

When you do it yourself it's "lie"
When you place an object, it's "lay"
E.g., I am going to lie down.
Lay out your clothes before you go to bed..

Answer 5

lie is something you just do - you don't do it TO anything. ("I'm gonna lie down for a few minutes")

lay is something you do TO something. ("I'm gonna lay - the table / - my girlfriend / - down the rules / - the money down")

But then I'm a Brit. What do I know?

Answer 6

Lie is the present tense, Lay the past tense.

I lie down now.

I lay down earlier.

Answer 7

Lie--Lay--have Lain--is lying----------say rest or recline in place of the form of LIE
lay--laid--have laid--is laying----------say put in place of the form of lay.

Answer 8

lie means to teel a fibe lay means to sleep somewhere lay somewhere

Answer 9

Buy a book called, "The Elements of Style". It is great for questions like this and very inexpensive.

But to answer your question right now:


You'll lay an egg if you don't lie down
In general, irregular verbs are troublesome to learn. Regular verbs create their past and past participle forms by adding “d” or “ed” to the stem of their infinitives (love, loved, loved), but irregular verbs create past and past participle forms by altering their stems in unpredictable ways.
A number of common irregular verbs give people trouble, particularly:

dive, drown, fly, hang, lead, prove, sit, set and shrink.

But lie and lay seem to give people more difficulty than do all the other irregular verbs combined. That's probably because the past tense form of lie is lay and thus indistinguishable from lay in the present tense except in usage. (Sit and set, probably the irregular verbs that give people the most trouble next to lie and lay, for example, have no parts in common. It's sit, sat and sat but set, set, set.)

The principal parts (most-common verb forms) of lie are:

lie (present,) lay (past) and lain (past participle).

The principal parts of lay are:

lay (present), laid (past) and laid (past participle).

As an aid in choosing the correct verb forms, remember that lie means to recline, whereas lay means to put something down.

• Lie means that the actor (subject) is doing something to himself or herself. It's what grammarians call a complete verb. When accompanied by subjects, complete verbs tell the whole story.
• Lay, on the other hand, means that the subject is acting on something or someone else; therefore, it requires a complement to make sense. Thus lay always takes a direct object. Lie never does.



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More on “lie”: In its simplest (command) form, when the you is implied, lie is a sentence all by itself. If you tell your dog, “Lie,” as in “(You) lie (down),” that's a complete sentence. (The same is true, by the way, of sit.) In written material, we generally use down with lie when we mean to recline not because down is needed grammatically but because we wish to distinguish from the regular verb lie, meaning to tell an untruth (as in lie, lied, lied).

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Tip: Always remember that lay is a transitive verb and requires a direct object. (A transitive verb acts as a conveyor belt, transmitting action or influence from the subject to the object.) The common saying, “Let's lay out in the sun,” is not only incorrect grammatically, it suggests a public promiscuity that's frowned on even in this age of sexual permissiveness because you're implying the existence of a direct object of lay: “Let's lay (her/him?) out in the sun.” Not that there's anything wrong with THAT! It's just ungrammatical unless you're talking about sex.

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Correct Usage:

Lie
Present tense: I lie down on my bed to rest my weary bones.
Past tense: Yesterday, I lay there thinking about what I had to do during the day.
Past participle: But I remembered that I had lain there all morning one day last week.

Lay
Present tense: As I walk past, I lay the tools on the workbench.
Past tense: As I walked past, I laid the tools on the workbench. And: I laid an egg in class when I tried to tell that joke.
Past participle: . . . I had laid the tools on the workbench.


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AN IMPORTANT TIP:
Here's an easy way to get it right -- every time -- without remembering all that gobbleygook above.
When you bump into a lie-lay conundrum -- when you aren't absolutely, 110 percent sure -- do this quick little exercise.*
Write these six words -- "lie, lay, lain" (to recline); then beside or below them -- "lay, laid, laid" (to place or put down).
When students do that (I see it on the sides of their quizzes), they never -- underline "never" -- get it wrong.
Simple, but it works. It's the Michiko Sato rule.*

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*The Michiko Sato Rule
I call this “The Michiko Sato Rule” because she invented a quick little way to make sure she always got it right in quizzes and exercises (and life).
When Michiko, who lives in Tokyo, was a student here, she would always write six words -- three atop the other three -- on her quizzes and exercises (we did 'em on paper then).

Lie Lay Lain
Lay Laid Laid

And she never got 'em wrong. Never!
I, therefore, being the smart guy that I am, developed the theory that if it worked for a student whose first language was Japanese, it would work for everyone. Give it a try.



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