LANGUAGE CORNER
by Evan Jenkins

Lend/Loan
Very Well, a Loan
"If he could spare the money," the popular novelist wrote, "he'd gladly loan it to me." Why take a perfectly good noun and make it a verb when there's already a perfectly good verb? A loan is what you get when somebody lends you something.

Lie, Lay, and all that
Lie This to Rest?
No, of course not. But the confusion between "lie" and "lay" was different and subtler in the following passage, which said someone who maneuvered for a job too overtly "did not do what a shrewd operator would do and lay low, but openly threw himself into the matter."

Someone was thinking of the expression "to lie low," meaning to hunker down, make oneself inconspicuous. Introduced by "did not," as it was in the example, the verb required the present tense: the job candidate "did not ... lie low." "Lay" is the past tense of "lie" -- she lay low for awhile. The past perfect tense is "lain" -- until that day, she had lain low.

Lie, lay, lain.

"To lie" means to rest, be at rest, repose, or just exist on or in some place ("the fault lies with the captain, not the crew") or in some condition or position (lie low, lie down). Probably because its past tense is "lay," the word is often confused with ...

... "To lay," meaning to put or place something somewhere (including to bring forth an egg). It takes an object -- lay that pistol down, babe -- and no form of "to lie" does. (Well, "lie your heart out," but that's another "lie.") .) The past tense of "lay" is "laid," and so is its past perfect tense.

Lay, laid, laid.

Despite some nay-sayers, the failure to distinguish between "lie" and "lay" is widely considered illiterate. And yet the failure is surprisingly common. Is the only answer rote memorization? Seems so, but anyone with a mnemonic trick that has helped avoid the confusion is welcome to send it along.

Addendum, Aug. 4, 1999
The murder suspect, the article reported, "laid low, escaping suspicion..." He didn't put something (except himself) someplace, so he "lay low." Lie, lay, lain. (If someone had knocked him out in a barroom brawl, we might say he'd been "laid low." At his funeral, he'd have been "laid to rest." Lay, laid, laid.)

"Lightening"; "Forecasted"
Lightening Was Forecasted?
Lisa Aug of the Office of Communications at the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children found this on a television network's Web site: "Powerful storms are forecasted for parts of the region again tonight." "Forecasted?" she asked, in obvious dismay. Alas, some major dictionaries do give that form as a second-choice past tense, and it turns up a lot. But it looks and sounds ignorant. "Forecast" does the job for the past as well as the present. In the same spot, Ms. Aug also found a story on fires in the West "spelling the electrical phenomenon 'lightening.' " That's also suprisingly common, but fortunately the dictionaries don't seem to support it, even as a copout alternative. The word is "lightning" -- no "e" -- unless we're making something literally or figuratively less weighty or less dark. Lightning, as it happens, has a lightening effect on the sky.

Like, With an Object
That Ole Devil “Like”
No, not the one in “John likes Mary.” And not the weird but widespread affliction of such expressions as “It’s, like, cool”; that’s not worth talking about. Our topic is the “like” that compares things. This one, by continuing consensus, was wrong:

“ . . . like Edwards and his Jets did . . .”

“Like” means “similar to,” which obviously wouldn’t work in the fragment above. The rule of thumb: Don’t use “like” if what follows is a noun (including a name) or pronoun that is the subject of its own verb. So it should be “as Edwards and his Jets did” or — it often sounds more natural — “the way” they did. In speech, the form “like they did” is virtually universal. For even moderately formal writing, our rule of thumb remains the safest bet. At least for now.

Confusion seems to arise about “like,” though. Consider “ . . . the current wave of terror, as the ones before it, represents . . . .” Someone — writer or editor — was afraid of “like.” But the phrase between commas has no verb of its own; “wave,” despite the parenthetical interruption, is the subject of the verb “represents.” “Like the ones before it” was the only way to go. (CJR, March/April 2003)

Loath/Loathe
If This Isn't Loath...
Pick a winner: The villain in the novel said, "That I am loath to do." The newspaper article said, "It's a strategy that ... the council is loathe to pursue" (emphasis added). There's at least one respected reference work that says it doesn't make any difference how we spell the italicized adjective in those sentences, which means "reluctant." The suggestion is that we drop the "e" if, in speech, we choose to pronounce it with a hard "th" as in "Goth" or "pith," but use the "e" if we opt for a soft "th," as in, well, "loathe," meaning to abhor, to hate. Fortunately, several other reference works don't go along with that permissiveness. Let the verb be "loathe" and the adjective "loath," however you pronounce it. Inviting the world's writers to flip a coin also invites a bit of chaos, and could drive alert readers crazy.

 

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