Lie and lay: a little lesson

Suppose a woman--let's call her Sharon--has a cat with a bad skin disease resulting in the loss of fur, and suppose Sharon gets in the habit of calling that cat "Naked" instead of its given name, "Sultana." And suppose one day Sharon comes home to discover the cat called Naked lying sick on the cold tile floor, unable even to lift her head to meow "Hello." Sharon knows that Naked is not long for this world and she wants to make her departure as comfortable as possible, so she picks up the cat and sets her carefully on the bed. In this case it would be possible for someone writing about the situation to begin a story with the sentence, "She laid Naked on the bed." Laid is the past tense of lay, a transitive verb meaning "to set (something) down." Sharon set down the cat: laid is the word you want.

Now suppose Sharon, overcome with grief, decides to lie down next to her suffering cat. She pets Naked gently while the cat breathes its last breath, and then she says a little prayer for the repose of Naked's feline soul. She has no time to waste, however, because she knows her husband will soon arrive home from a long stint in Iraq and he would prefer his bed to hold a live wife than a dead cat. Dwayne has never cared for the cat; he wanted to have Naked put to sleep back when the first faint hints of the dreaded skin disease manifested themselves. Sharon had promised to put the cat to sleep after Dwayne left for Iraq, but she has not kept her promise, and now she must quickly compose herself so his first moments home from the war will be suitably welcoming. She wraps the dead cat and hides the body in the trunk of her car, and then she bustles about lighting candles and dressing in a little red satin skimpy thing. Some time later, when Dwayne finally remembers to ask her how long it's been since the cat died, she says, "Oh, months and months." In this case it is possible to begin a story with the sentence, "She lied naked in the bed." Lied is the past tense of lie, meaning "to tell an untruth." A naked Sharon told a lie about the cat: lied is word you want.

Suppose, though, that you want to begin a story about a naked woman who at some time in the past was recumbent on a bed. She is not telling an untruth and she is not setting something down; therefore, the verb you want is neither lay nor the form of lie meaning to tell an untruth. Instead, you want the form of lie that means "to recline." And what is the simple past tense of that form of lie? Why, lay, of course! Sharon might lie on the bed today, but sometime in the past, Sharon lay on the bed. She never laid on it unless she was setting something down, like the cat, Naked. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to begin a story with the sentence "Sharon laid naked on the bed"--unless you want to start all over again with that darn cat. Sharon lies on the bed today, but she lay naked on it yesterday, and she laid Naked the cat on it last week, and she might lie there speculating about where else at she might have laid the cat and how she might have lied about it, and whether she might have lain more easily at night if she had told Dwayne the simple truth.

See? It's not that difficult.