Grammar Quiz

red top rescue · Jan 1, 2017

They didn't use my favorite one, conjugating the verbs TO LAY and TO LIE. Think how many times those are used incorrectly in popular songs!

i.e. "Lay down Sally" (Eric Clapton) and "Lay Lady Lay" -- one could make a song list of the incorrect usage actually..............

"Lady Lets Lay Down and Dance" (Garth Brooks)

Lady Lay Down (John Conley)

Lay Low (Blake Shelton)

Lay There and Hate Me (Ben Harper & Relentless7)

Roll Over Lay Down (Status Quo)

She Lays Down (The 1975)

etc.

But there are plenty of songs that use it correctly too:

Lay Down Your Weapons (K. Koke)

Lay Me Down (Sam Smith)

Lay You Down (Usher)

Lay It On Me (Kelly Rowland)

etc.

DreamerRose · Jan 1, 2017

Yes.
People and cats LIE down.
Cats are LYING on a blanket.
Cats LIE in front of the door.
They also LIE together in boxes.

profdanglais · Jan 1, 2017

*nerd hat on*

Lay is a transitive verb, which means it needs an object. That's why you lay something on a table, or something else lays you down. Lie is intransitive, so doesn't take an object. So when you lie down you're basically the subject and the object. I have always thought that the reason people get confused is that the past tense of lie is lay. So, lie, lay, lain and lay, laid, laid. Raise and rise are another example of a transitive/intransitive pair, but people tend not to confuse them because their past forms are noticeably different.

*doffs nerd hat*

denice · Jan 1, 2017

Grammar was my least favorite subject in school. I absolutely hated diagramming sentences. I loved Literature though. In high school we had to take some type of English course every year but by my junior year it was all Literature courses and in college I stayed away from speech and writing courses. I stuck with the Literature courses. What gets me is that you can find a lot of grammar errors in many of the great author's work.

ReallySleepy · Jan 1, 2017

profdanglais said:
*nerd hat on*

Why? There is nothing nerdy about being precise.

profdanglais said:
Lay is a transitive verb, which means it needs an object.

As a non-English-speaker I am amazed at usage on this forum. Cats here always lay - they never lie. People err in other languages too, but the prevalence of this particular solecism is mind-boggling.

DreamerRose · Jan 1, 2017

I've had so many dental assistants, nurses, physical therapists, and x-ray technicians tell me to "lay down" that I now correct them. One of them was a lovely young Russian woman, and she looked at me in horror when I told her it was "lie down." But, but, she stammered, "lie" means not to tell the truth. Yes, I told her, it means that too. "The word has two meanings." She didn't move. I don't think she believed me, so I lay down anyway.

Willowy · Jan 1, 2017

Why? There is nothing nerdy about being precise.

It's very nerdy. But there's nothing wrong with being nerdy! Embrace it! :lol3:

I guess I've never thought twice about the difference between lie and lay :anon:. But now that I try to think about it (it's hard to think about what you say naturally!), I'm pretty sure i would tell someone to lie down, if i were in a position to do so :tongue2:.

When I was a kid, I had schoolwork called "learning language arts through literature", which basically taught sentence structure, spelling, grammar, etc. by reading books and analyzing excerpts from those books. So I have never diagrammed a sentence in the usual way, but I still learned the important parts.

DreamerRose · Jan 1, 2017

Here's a little trick to remember the difference.

Hens lay eggs; cats lie down.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Primula · Jan 2, 2017

Willowy said:
Yeah, the answer was "felt bad". I once learned something about when to say "badly" although I don't remember the details. But you never feel badly, unless you have a diminished sense of touch .

I still don't understand that one. The creek was the other one that I stupidly didn't get.

"I felt badly" - badly is an adverb so what's wrong with that? You would never say she drives bad. You would say she drives badly.

ReallySleepy said:
As a non-English-speaker I am amazed at usage on this forum.

Meaning?

-----------------
I used to work with a very smart woman. For the life of her she could not figure out past and passed. Tried to explain, but she never did get it. Our office manager also had no clue of the difference between a noun & an adjective. All things I learned in grade school.

profdanglais · Jan 2, 2017

Primula said:
I still don't understand that one. The creek was the other one that I stupidly didn't get.

"I felt badly" - badly is an adverb so what's wrong with that? You would never say she drives bad. You would say she drives badly.

Adverbs describe the action expressed by verbs. So if you say "She drives badly" badly describes the action of her driving. But "feel" is a kind of verb that usually describes not an action but the state of its subject. So effectively, the modifier needs to describe the subject and not the verb, meaning it has to be an adjective. "Bad" describes the state of the person who feels, not the manner in which they feel. Saying someone feels badly means they are not good at feeling, i.e. their feelings don't work properly. Someone with Asperger's might be described as feeling badly since their feelings don't function the same way most people's do, but if you are saying that your emotional state is not good, you have to say you feel bad. Similarly, when a person is malodorous, you would say they smell bad (describing their odour) because to say they smell badly would mean their nose doesn't work. Other verbs of this type include look, sound, feel, taste, etc.

Primula · Jan 2, 2017

profdanglais said:
Adverbs describe the action expressed by verbs. So if you say "She drives badly" badly describes the action of her driving. But "feel" is a kind of verb that usually describes not an action but the state of its subject. So effectively, the modifier needs to describe the subject and not the verb, meaning it has to be an adjective. "Bad" describes the state of the person who feels, not the manner in which they feel. Saying someone feels badly means they are not good at feeling, i.e. their feelings don't work properly. Someone with Asperger's might be described as feeling badly since their feelings don't function the same way most people's do, but if you are saying that your emotional state is not good, you have to say you feel bad. Similarly, when a person is malodorous, you would say they smell bad (describing their odour) because to say they smell badly would mean their nose doesn't work. Other verbs of this type include look, sound, feel, taste, etc.

I got it now. That does make sense. Merci beaucoup!

ReallySleepy · Jan 2, 2017

ReallySleepy said:
Originally Posted by Primula

ReallySleepy said:

As a non-English-speaker I am amazed at usage on this forum.

Click to expand...

Meaning?

I thought I explained that: people writing lay when what they mean to say is lie. Everyday communication must suffer if one mixes up these verbs.

Grammar Quiz

red top rescue

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DreamerRose

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profdanglais

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denice

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ReallySleepy

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DreamerRose

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Willowy

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DreamerRose

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Primula

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profdanglais

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Primula

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ReallySleepy

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