Laying versus Lying

The popular confusion between these two verbs drives me crazy. But I have given up trying to correct people because I hear this mistake all around me and I am very much afraid that the verb "to lie" (as on the couch) is going to disappear. My doctor recently told me to lay on the examining table. When I corrected her, she looked so totally confused that I felt terrible and took an inner oath not to correct anyone ever again. I am having a hard time sticking to this oath.

The distinction between “to lie” and "to lay" is particularly hard for Chinese-Speaking English learners as Chinese has no morphological changes with verbs in terms of tense (and aspect) , and the writing forms for "to lie 躺" and "to lay 放" are totally different. This tip is very helpful for Chinese-speaking English learners.

It drives me crazy hearing the misuse of lay all day long! Even one of my daughters, who was an English major in college says “I’m going to lay down!” Her sister tells her dog to “Lay down” all of the time! It’s like hearing “I seen,” or “ain’t! “

Glad to know that at least a few other people have this pet peeve. I was beginning to think I was the only one. Even people who tend to correct other people's grammar seem to make this particular grammatical error a lot. And ironically, some people have begun using 'lie' when they SHOULD use 'lay'!

The same rule applies to lying and laying. You would write, “I was lying down on the couch,” because the verb was lying does not have a direct object. But you would write, “I was laying the book down on the couch when you walked in” because was laying has a direct object, “the book.”

Hi- the above confuses me. Either you contradicted yourself or left out a not, or some other option I don’t see. Please clarify. -Unapologetic actual nerd, kinda-

I am about to lay myself down because I have a headache from thinking about this with respect to what to do about a "problem". I wanted to express what was the problem with a piece of electro-mechanical equipment that has been fixed. I know that a construction like, "That is where the problem lies" is conventional. In past tense is should be "That is where the problem lay". As usual, I continued to churn it around in my head. It seems like "problem" could be considered to be the direct object. Furthermore, if the "problem" was caused by an outside force, it might have been laid by that force, but if the problem was in the part itself, say, due to normal wear, it would be different and might have "lain".

Y'all need to calm down - everyone with exclamation marks in your post are upset at trivial things. Stay civil. It ain't gonna help yellin' at folk. Bro at work says "physical year" instead of "fiscal year" but I know what he means and don't worry about it. When a goofball corrected him and he tried to implement it, I congratulated him when he got it right, saying good job.
Throughout the history of the English language you can see irreconcilable changes. How we use a word as well as how we structure sentences keeps changing. I don't use the word whom in the correct place. For clarity with myself and normal people, I use who. Whom sounds proper in a bad way. I want my English to get the point across to my intended fellow, not to be "correct". There are so many important things to fight for. Let English slip as it has and fight for those things that matter. But for now, I won't lie where to lay this.