"Lay", "Laid", and "Lied"

Bill Situ

English and ESL Instructor

What is the difference between lay, laid, and lied? Many people, including native speakers of English, tend to incorrectly use these words.

To begin with, you need to know that lie and lay are two separate base forms.

"Lie"

The word lie has two meanings:

     1) To say something untruthful
     2) To rest in a horizontal position on a surface (e.g. lie on a bed)

​For the first definition, the past tense form would be lied:

      Jeremy lied to the police about his involvement in the killing. 

For the second definition, the past tense form would be lay:

     Jeremy lay on the ground motionless after the baseball struck his head.

Note that lie is an intransitive verb, meaning that it cannot follow with a direct object pronoun. Therefore, it is improper to say the following:

    Leo lied the books on the table. (The direct object in this example would be the books.)

"Lay"

Lay means to place an object in a horizontal position on a surface. The correct past tense form is laid:

     Leo laid the books on the table.

Unlike lie, lay is a transitive verb, so it can follow with a direct object. That being said, the example above is perfectly grammatical.