‘Lie in bed’ or ‘lay in bed’ in English

by Jakub Marian

Tip: See my list of the Most Common Mistakes in English. It will teach you how to avoid mis­takes with com­mas, pre­pos­i­tions, ir­reg­u­lar verbs, and much more.

Lie, lay, lied, laid, layed… Does it even matter? We understand each other anyway, right? In fact, it does matter. Using an incorrect form increases the risk of misunderstanding at best, and it may make you sound uneducated.

The difference between “lie” and “lay” is actually not so hard to understand:

to lay something (somewhere) = to put something (somewhere)
to lie somewhere = to be located somewhere OR
to lie somewhere (2) = to be in a horizontal position somewhere

Do you see the difference? You can only lay something (including eggs, if you are a hen), but you cannot lie it, and something can lie somewhere, but it cannot lay there. A couple of examples:

Female chickens lay eggs.
Please, lay the book (down) on the table.
The eggs lie in a basket.
The book lies on the table.

The same rule applies in the present progressive tense:

correct I am lying in bed right now.
wrong I am laying in bed right now.

The second sentence is incorrect, unless you are about to lay an egg. Conversely, if you are laying something, you cannot use “lying”:

correct They are laying a new carpet.
wrong They are lying a new carpet.

Here, of course, we are ignoring the third, unrelated meaning of the verb “lie”, which is

to lie = to say something that you know is false,

but I believe it is safe to assume that no one will confuse “lay” with “not to tell the truth”.

The confusing past tense

Here’s where things get a little complicated. The past tense of “lay” is “laid”, so no problem there, but the past tense of “lie” (in the sense of “being in a certain position”) is “lay”. Wait… what?

For some obscure reason, the past tense of “lie” is exactly the same word with which it gets confused in the present tense:

Did the chicken lay an egg?
Yes, the chicken laid an egg.
Did the egg lie in a basket?
Yes, the egg lay in a basket.

(Note that although some people spell “laid” as “layed”, this spelling is generally considered to be an error.) You can clearly recognize the difference in the third person singular:

he lays = he puts (something somewhere)
he lay = he was located somewhere or was in a horizontal position

To make matters even worse, the past tense of “lie” is “lied”, not “lay”, when the meaning is “to tell a lie”:

correct She lied about her age.
wrong She lay about her age.

Going back to our original example with “lying in bed”:

I lay in bed yesterday = I was lying in bed; I stayed in bed
I lied in bed yesterday = I didn’t say the truth when I was in bed yesterday

I’ll leave the interpretation of the second sentence to your imagination.

The past participle

The torture does not end here. We still haven’t covered one case: the past participle (aka “the third form”), which we need in order to form the present perfect. The participles are:

layhas laid
lie (location)has lain
lie (tell an untruth)has lied

Fortunately, using the present perfect of these three verbs is relatively uncommon. Here are a few examples (note that “to lay down” is an idiomatic expression meaning, among others, “to establish, to enact”):

The government has laid down strict rules.
He has lain there helpless for weeks. (rare in modern English.)
Have you ever lied to me?

By the way, if you haven’t read my guide on how to avoid the most common mistakes in English, make sure to check it out; it deals with similar topics.

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