Diffirent
1. Lay - laid - laid
Lay is a transitive verb, it needs an direct object —something being laid—.
For example
- You might lay a book on the table, lay a sweater on the bed, or lay a child in her crib.
2. Lie - lay - lain
Lie is an intransitve verbs, it cannot have an object.
- When you feel tired at the end of the day, you may lie down.
- But you can’t
lie a book anywhere (lie can not have an object), and you can’t lay down at the end of the day (no object).
This is where things get weird, especially in the past-tense and past-participial inflections of lie, which sound like they should correspond to lay. For example, one would be correct in saying,
- I lay down in bed at 8:45 last night. ("lay" is the Past form of lie)
- I had lain there a few minutes when I realized the oven was on.
The past-tense lied is reserved for the sense of lie that involves intentionally making false statements.
These words can be tricky, but if you memorize the above table and remember that lay is transitive (i.e., it has an object) and lie is intransitive (it doesn’t have an object), the words are not so difficult.
These writers deploy them in some potentially tricky situations:
- Mr Beveridge believes the bomb had lain undiscovered for decades. [Scotland Courier]
- On Tuesday afternoon, crews had laid what appeared to be one layer of asphalt on one lane. [Newnan Times-Herald]
- Beyond it lay an unshoveled yard where the snow was dotted with candles and two smoky fires. [NY Times]
- If ever there was a work that lay down and died in the stillness of reproduction, this is it. [Chicago Tribune]
NOTE
The most common errors involving lie and lay are so widespread that some English reference sources have all but given up on keeping the words separate, and of course, not using the proper form is not a big error in informal speech or writing.
Still, if you are writing for school or work or in any context where you need to be taken seriously, it is best to use the traditional inflections.