Heh-heh. She Said, "Laid."

Good afternoon, my fine Hawklets. Find the error in today's headlines on Excite:





Kudos to those who know the jackpot winner is really "lying low" and not "laying low."

Here's the low down. "Lay" means "to place or put." It's a transitive verb and needs an object. "Lay" is something you do to something else. You lay a book on a table. "Lie" means to "to recline." It is an intransitive verb and does not act upon anything else. You just lie down, no object required. You lie low. Or, to use the present participle, you are lying low.

Confusion seeps in with phrases like "Now I lay me down to sleep." Hey - shouldn't that be "lie?" No, because In this case, "me" is the object being acted upon. Further confusion arises in past tense, because the past tense of "lay" is "laid," and the past tense of "lie" is, just to muck things up, "lay."

Past participle is where it gets really hairy, and I admit even the Kimmijo gets this one wrong. The past participle of "lay" is "laid," as in "They have laid 500 feet of pipe a day." The past participle of "lie" is the endangered, rarely spotted "lain," as in, "I could have lain in bed all day."

Don't feel badly about this one. This particular grammar obfuscation has been going on since the 1300's. I take it as evidence against intelligent design. It also made my seventh grade English teacher cry, because we all giggled and whispered every time she said, "laid."

ps. "Layed" does not exist, except as a misspelling.
pps. Next on "Law & Order: Grammar Police": Affect/effect!