A Word, Please: Is it time to lay this confusion to rest?

“I’ve lived near this beach all my life. I can’t count how many times I’ve lain on the sand to soak up the rays.”　

I grew up in a beachy part of the country, the Florida Gulf Coast. Pretty much everyone I knew was in the accelerated program for severe skin damage, yours truly included.

People talked a lot about reclining by the shore while listening to Madonna’s latest hit and struggling to tame a big feathered hairdo in 80% humidity. (I’ll let you guess which decade was my heyday). 　

But in all my years of talking about tanning skin to a fine shoe-grade leather, I never once heard anyone use “lain.” I doubt I ever heard anyone use “lay” in the proper and traditional sense, either.　

No. They said today they’ll “lay” on the beach, yesterday they “laid” on the beach, and in the past, they have “laid” on the beach. According to dictionaries, those aren’t right. I’d add that there’s something not quite right about the dictionaries’ take on “lay” and “lie.”

But before we get to that, we need the basic lesson. 　

“Lay” takes a direct object. That means you do it to something else. You lay a book on a table, for instance. Verbs that take direct objects like “book” are called transitive verbs.　

“Lie” takes no object. You lie on the bed. You lie down. It’s an intransitive verb. 　

That’s the easy part. It gets hard when you get into the past tense. 　

The simple past tense of “lay” is “laid,” which is also its past participle. Remember the participle is the one that goes with a form of have: 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.　

The simple past tense of “lie,” however, is “lay.” That’s right, the past tense of one word is the same as the infinitive of the word with which it’s most confused. That’s a big problem for anyone who hopes to keep the two words straight.

The past participle of lie is “lain.” So today, I lie on the beach. Yesterday, I lay on the beach. In the past, I have lain on the beach. 　

Nobody — and I mean nobody — says that. 　

That’s not just my experience. Baltimore Sun copy chief John McIntyre can’t get this stuff into people’s heads to save his life, as he reports in a particularly delightful installment of his online video series “You Don’t Say.” 　

What’s odd is that dictionaries like Merriam-Webster continue to promote the distinction. And before you applaud them for standing firm, take note: That’s not their job. Lexicography is supposed to be an unbiased mirror of how people use the language.

A word’s correct usage is based exclusively on precedent, for lack of a better term. If you started using the word “dog” to mean “cat” and enough people followed your lead for long enough, “dog” would eventually be the correct term for a feline.

Yes, word evolution causes a lot of confusion. But it’s unstoppable and usually works out in the end. “Girl” used to mean not a female child but a child of either sex. “Cloud” used to mean a hill or a mass of rock. “Travel” evolved from a meaning more like “torture” (and that was before the invention of the economy-class cabin).

And no one these days is complaining about any of those changes in the language.　

McIntyre enforces the distinction between “lay” and “lie” in his editing work. So do I. But, like me, he occasionally wonders: Why bother?　

“Sometimes you think we’ve just about reached the point where Gen. Lee should call up Gen. Grant and surrender unconditionally.”　

In other words, maybe it’s time to take this change in the language laying down.

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JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.