by Francien Jones
Do you confuse lay and lie on purpose or by accident?
In my family, we catch each other when we make mistakes in English: grammar, pronunciation, word usage, or whatever it may be. I guess that comes with the territory—I am an ESL teacher and my husband has a master’s degree in English Literature. We seemed to have passed it on to our children as well, because they’re often quick to catch us if we slip up and say something incorrectly. Growing up, however, my children would identify a “pet peeve” of my husband and purposely say it wrong just to annoy him.
A couple of favorites were “on purpose” and “by accident” because he would become very bothered when he would hear people say, “on accident”. So, my children would switch them and say, “by purpose” and “on accident”. Of course, no one really says “by purpose”, unless they are trying to bug their dad. “On purpose” is the correct form to express doing something intentionally, and that is what you will hear English speakers say. In contrast, whether to use “by accident” and “on accident” (meaning accidentally) is not so easily determined by just listening to native speakers. Traditionally, “by accident” is the correct form, but you may hear people say, “on accident”, which has become more common among younger speakers. Despite the somewhat general acceptance of the “on accident” form in speech, “by accident” remains the more acceptable form in written English, particularly in any kind of professional writing. So, a word of caution: though you may hear people say, “on accident”, when you are doing any academic writing, try to use the more traditional form, “by accident”.
Another mistake, often made by me (sometimes on purpose), that annoys my husband is the use of lay vs. lie. These are some verbs that can be rather confusing, and I grew up using them wrong. I know what is correct now, but often slip back into my old habits. The verb lay has different meanings, but we’ll just talk about the one that is often confused with lie. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, it means “to put or set down”, and it is followed by an object. You lay something (the object) somewhere. For example: He laid (past tense) his coat across the back of the chair.
Lie, on the other hand, means “to be or to stay at rest in a horizontal position; to rest or recline.” We often say that we “lie down to rest”. We do not follow this verb with an object. The really confusing part about these two verbs comes in the use of the past tense of lie, which is lay. Perhaps to make it clearer, we’ll put it in a table.
| lay | lie | |
| present | lay | lie |
| past | laid | lay |
| past participle | laid | lain |
| present participle | laying | lying |
The past tense of lie is the same as the present tense of lay? Yes, it is. In order to know the difference, you’ll need to really understand the difference in meaning. Lay is a transitive verb, meaning the subject is doing an action on an object. Lie is an intransitive verb, meaning the subject is doing the action themselves.
Just as the word lay has multiple meanings, so does lie. Most of you are probably more familiar with the word lie when it means an untruth. In this case, the past tense of lie is lied, not lay. Yes, English can be complicated, even for native English speakers.
Read more about lay vs. lie on this site.
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