Jeez, if you're going to offer unsolicited "corrections" about your favorite pedantic pet peeves

[conuly]

you could at least do a quick google search to make sure that you're right.

But...'sleeping dogs', unlike some people, never LIE, they always LAY... people LIE, when they speak (sometimes); LAY with their bodies. (This expression is used often in letters to ABBY and usually wrong.)

Nope, wrong, wrong, wrong. One lies down. One lays a thing down. If your dialect allows you to say "lay" where Standard English prescribes lie, so be it - but that doesn't make "lie" incorrect in that place... and certainly not in fixed expressions like "let sleeping dogs lie".

This is almost worse than all those people who think they care about "grammar" when really they are obsessed with their petty ideas of correct orthography.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

I suppose sleeping dogs could lay eggs, but that would be unlikely.

And anyway, if the phrase is 'let sleeping dogs lie' then one should use it.

[conuly]

Indeed. Conventional expressions are often non-literal and a bit odd - like falling "head over heels in love" instead of the more logical "heels over head", or saying "have your cake and eat it too" when the obvious order is "eat your cake and have it still", or saying "the proof is in the pudding" where proof is an older usage meaning "test" and the original form is "the proof (test) of the pudding is in the eating" - now, that version makes sense, but nobody says that, do they?

[greghousesgf]

I actually do say the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

[conuly]

That makes you part of a very niche group.

[wpadmirer]

Seriously? People were correcting that? (SMH)

[conuly]

"Correcting" isn't what that person was doing.

[wpadmirer]

EGADS. People are obnoxious.

[rhoda_rants]

Huh, this is actually really helpful, because I struggle with getting the difference between "lie" and "lay" right. But I've heard that expression millions of times, and it's a good hint to keep it straight!

[conuly]

In casual speech in many dialects it's always okay to say "lay".

[sylvaine]

Lollll oh god. It's so EMBARRASSING even witnessing that kind of thing.

[conuly]

Mm-hm.

[james]

OMG this reminds me of a time someone sent me a "correction" saying that calico cats are always female and I had a male calico cat in my story -- which isn't strictly true, they're mostly always female but also my calico cat was a human male who was able to magically change into a cat.

So. Like. Real genetics don't matter. But they were super upset about it (so I wrote a sequel with mpreg and kittens.)

[cynthia1960]

Ok, where's this story and it's sequel? Mpreg s usually not my thing, but add kittens? Oh yeah.

[james]

The first bit is here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/351783

I don't know if the kittens snippet made it to Ao3 or not. (There was no mpreg onscreen, just the appearance of the kittens, after.)

[conuly]

...okay, actually that calico thing would bug me too.

[james]

A human magically turns into a cat - does it matter what type of cat it is?

[conuly]

YES.

[james]

I AM JUDGING YOU SO HARD.

;-)

[conuly]

*GASP*

[james]

I am going to turn your favorite character into a PINK RACCOON and force you to acknowledge its existence.

[conuly]

NEVER. I SHALL NEVER EVER DO THAT.

[redbird]

On the larger point, yes absolutely.

On this specific, at this point in the history of American English, the usage is complex and fuzzy enough that almost everyone will get it "wrong" sometimes. "Lie" is two different verbs, only one of them regular (giving "lie" different past tenses depending on meaning), and that irregular past is the present tense of a different verb. That person may believe implicitly in the honesty of all non-human animals, but there's nothing grammatically wrong with "the cats lied to me, claiming they hadn't been fed since the Stone Age."

I may be the last holdout for "might" as the past tense of "may", because I find it confusing to use "may" as its own past (in things like "if it wasn't raining, he may have been there"), but I would happily be rid of the tangle of lie (deceive), lie (down), and lay (cards on a table).

[conuly]

That person may believe implicitly in the honesty of all non-human animals, but there's nothing grammatically wrong with "the cats lied to me, claiming they hadn't been fed since the Stone Age."

*giggles*

My cats would never! How dare you!

On this specific, at this point in the history of American English, the usage is complex and fuzzy enough that almost everyone will get it "wrong" sometimes.

Certainly, and so long as you're not going around offering unsolicited corrections, it's no big.

[mama_kestrel]

This made me laugh aloud. Thank you, Dr. Whom!

[conuly]

Who vs whom: It is always correct to use "who". When in doubt, use "who".

If you're going to use "whom", use it where you'd use "him", "them", or "me". (This may require translating questions to statements.)

[pensnest]

I experience weekly irritation when my yoga instructor tells the class to lay down.

But I do not correct her!

[conuly]

In many dialects that usage is correct, anyway.

[maju]

The saying "the lay of the land" really gets on my nerves, but I'm assured (by an American who would never otherwise use "lay" wrongly), that in this expression it's acceptable.

[conuly]

Literally never occurred to me until just now that that phrase could have anything to do with the verb "to lay".

[coyotegoth]

This makes me wonder about the scene in Scott Pilgrim vs the w\World where Todd says "We have unfinished business, I and he" and Scott angrily responds, "he and me!"

[conuly]

"The two of us".

[pauamma]

I believe this is more of what Language Log refers to as prescriptivist poppycock.

[conuly]

No, this is a couple of steps down from that. At least two people have to prescribe poppycock.

[fred_mouse]

All this is making me think of is 'now I lay me down to sleep' and wondering how that fits in with what you have written (which might be quite obvious, but I'm not doing language properly right now, and and can't tell whether I'm agreeing with you or the other person.

[conuly]

"Now I lay me down" is grammatically equivalent to "Now I lay my dolly down". Lay is being used as a transitive verb, the object of which is me (or, in more modern language, myself).

The prayer also has a neat should-would construction which I thought was mostly extinct in everyday speech but then just recently I saw it in quoted text in an article, and not from some over-educated classicist but from a elementary teacher! Well, elementary teachers can be over-educated, but still. I wonder if the usage is still current in her area or if it's just a personal quirk. Other than in the prayer the only other place I've ever seen a should-would is in forced Latin translations.

[fred_mouse]

Ah, I hadn't noticed it was transitive. That makes sense. Thank you.

I'm not familiar enough with the prayer to know which bit you are referring to in the second paragraph though.

[conuly]

If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul would take

Bit grim, really.

[fred_mouse]

Huh. I think I know that as 'If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take'. At least, that is the best approximation I can come up with. And no, I don't think I've encountered that formulation anywhere else.