Lie Lay

This is the single most screwed up verb in the English language. Everyone struggles with it, not because we are stupid, but because the language itself is broken.

Definition	Present	Past	Present Participle	Past Participle
to place on a surface (transitive)	lay	laid	laying	laid
to recline (intransitive)	lie	lay	lying	lain
to deceive	lie	lied	lying	lied

Who’s to blame for this disaster? English teachers. Yes, English teachers and grammarians are ruining things for the rest of us. Left to its own devices, a language naturally gravitates towards logical structure. It’s only when people come along and declare the “right” way to do it as a matter of authority that language gets frozen in time. It’s actually easy to fix the lie-lay problem, if we’re willing to make a small change. Casual examination of the table reveals a bug in line 2. All the ambiguous forms are on that one row. Just make lay both transitive and intransitive. There are plenty of other verbs with this dual nature, and it’s obvious from context.

Definition	Present	Past	Present Participle	Past Participle
to place on a surface (transitive) to recline (intransitive)	lay	laid	laying	laid
to deceive	lie	lied	lying	lied

Examples: I will lay down now.
They laid around.
The chicken laid an egg.
Don’t lie to me! Uncomfortable? Not nearly as bad as the “correct” form!