A Word, Please: Lay and lie can even trip up the dictionary

Typos dog everyone with a keyboard, and that horrible feeling of realizing too late that a resume, important email or blog post contained an error is practically universal.

Not even grammar columnists are immune (as countless “gotcha” emails I’ve received over the years prove).

So for everyone who’s experienced that sinking feeling, here’s a story to make you feel better. Recently, an editor friend wanted to know whether the word “push-up” had a hyphen in it, so she checked Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, the preferred dictionary in much of the publishing world. It does have a hyphen, she learned. But something else she saw in the entry proved even more interesting.

A push-up, according to the current edition of Merriam-Webster’s, is “an exercise in which you lay on your stomach and raise and lower your body by straightening and bending your arms.”

My friend pasted the definition in an email, highlighted the word “lay” and sent it to me with a single question: “Am I seeing things?”

Like her, I did a double-take. That’s not how wordsmiths use the word “lay,” and it’s certainly not a usage you’d expect to see in a dictionary.

“Lay” and “lie” cause a lot of confusion. “Lay” is a transitive verb, “lie” is intransitive. A transitive verb takes a direct object, an intransitive verb does not. In “Lay the book on the table,” the direct object — the noun receiving the action of the verb — is the book. In “Lie down,” there is no object — no noun receiving the action.

You could argue that one is implied, but that doesn’t count when determining whether a verb is transitive or intransitive. The object has to be there.

So the basic difference between “lay” and “lie” is easy. It’s in the past tenses that they get ugly.

Both “lay” and “lie” are irregular verbs, meaning you can’t get their past tense forms just by adding “ed,” as you do to verbs like “walk” and “call” and “chew.” Instead, you have to know them, as with irregular verbs like “think” and “bring” and “drive.”

For regular verbs, the simple past tense form and the past participle are the same: Today, I walk. Yesterday, I walked. In the past, I have walked. For irregular verbs, the simple past tense and past participle could be the same or different: Today, I think. Yesterday, I thought. In the past, I have thought. Today, I drive. Yesterday, I drove. In the past, I have driven.

“Lay” and “lie” add a nasty twist because the simple past tense of “lie” just happens to be “lay.” Today, I lie down. Yesterday, I lay down. And, finishing the set, the past participle of “lie” is “lain”: In the past, I have lain down.

Both past forms of “lay” are the same: laid. Today, I lay the book on the table. Yesterday, I laid the book on the table. In the past, I have laid the book on the table.

But Merriam-Webster’s definition wasn’t complicated by tenses. It was simple present tense. By the most basic definition of “lay” and “lie,” the dictionary just used the wrong word. However, it contains a loophole.

Look up the word “lay” in that same dictionary, and you’ll see way down in the list of definitions that “lay” can be a synonym of “lie,” but only in “nonstandard” uses. The dictionary also includes some usage notes at the end explaining that “lay” has a centuries-long history as an intransitive verb.

But if Merriam itself really considered “lay” to be a decent substitute for “lie,” it wouldn’t have dubbed it “nonstandard” in its own definition.

So the Merriam-Webster folks fell short of their own standards for use of “lay” and “lie.” But I suppose we can all relate to that.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at [email protected].