Learn how to use the verb "Lie"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. |
| My name is Alisha, and in this lesson, we're going to talk about the verb "lie." |
| Let's get started! |
| The basic definition of the verb "lie" is "to be in or to move to a horizontal position." |
| Examples: |
| "I'm going to lie on the sofa and read a book." |
| "We lay in the grass, enjoying the sun." |
| Now, let's look at the conjugations of this verb. |
| Present: lie, lies |
| Past: lay |
| Past Participle: lain |
| Progressive: lying |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first additional meaning is "to have a certain place or position." |
| Examples: |
| "The town lies at the base of the mountains." |
| "Here lies the famous poet." |
| So, in these example sentences, "lie" refers to the position of something. |
| In the first example sentence, "The town lies at the base of the mountains," it means the town is located at the base of the mountain. The town's position is at the base of the mountains. |
| In the second example sentence, "Here lies the famous poet," it means here is the famous poet. This is the location of the famous poet. However, this is sort of a special expression. "Here lies (person)" is used for the body of a person, a person who has died, a person who has passed away. When we want to describe the location where their body is, we say, here lies (so and so). |
| "Here lies the famous poet." |
| "Here lies my former pet," for example |
| So, you can use it for pets, I supposed too, but, "Here lies (before the person)." |
| Let's go to the second additional meaning for this verb. |
| The second additional meaning is "to purposefully give false information." |
| Examples: |
| "Don't lie to me!" |
| "The company found out she lied on her resume!" |
| So, this use of "lie" refers to someone purposefully, meaning they plan to share information that is not true, it's false, or there's something that's not correct about it. So, they're doing it on purpose. It's not just a simple mistake, it's a plan. So, a lie is typically regarded as a bad thing, though, there are some situations where we might lie to, I don't know, help a situation. That's beside the point. |
| But in the first example sentence, "Don't lie to me!" it means don't tell me false information. Don't say things to me that are not true. |
| In the second example sentence, "lie" is used to refer to lying on a resume. A resume is a document you give to a potential employer. It lists your work experience and your educational history, whatever is relevant related to that job. To lie in your resume means to submit false information on your resume, information that is not true. So, this is a big problem. This is not a good thing to do. So, lying is considered bad, so we use the verb "lie" to refer to that action, to give false information. |
| The third additional meaning is "to belong to." |
| To belong to |
| Let's look at some examples: |
| "Responsibility for the success of this project lies with you." |
| "The secret to this dish lies in the sauce." |
| So this might be a little bit tough to understand, but let's look at the examples carefully. |
| So this meaning of "lie ~ to belong to," can be attached to…like to people to talk about their responsibilities or their obligations. It can also be attached to objects, as we see in the second example sentence to talk about some kind of characteristic or feature of those things. |
| In the first example sentence, we see, "The responsibility for the success of the project lies with you." In other words, the responsibility belongs to you. You have the responsibility of making this project successful. |
| In the second example sentence, we see some special characteristic described. So, it's about the sauce there, so like the secret to the dish is deliciousness, perhaps. It's in the sauce, so it belongs to the sauce, so there's something special about the sauce that makes the dish delicious. In other words, the secret to the dish lies in the sauce, belongs to the sauce. There's something in the sauce that makes it special. |
| So, you can think of this use of "lie" as meaning "belong to," to describe responsibility or a special feature, something like that. There's a special something that consists within that thing. |
| Let's go to some variations now, some variations with the verb "lie." |
| The first one is "to lie low." |
| To lie low |
| This means to be quiet or to refrain from activities, usually because you want to hide, for some reason. |
| Some examples: |
| "I'm gonna lie low until all this drama is over." |
| "Let's lie low and see what our competitors do." |
| So the image here of "lie low," like if you can remember back to the basic definition of the verb, "to lie" which means to be in or to move to a horizontal position, like you lie in bed, if you lie low, it sounds like you're maybe at that horizontal position, but at a low level, like you're hiding, kind of. |
| So, we use this as an expression to mean like we want to be out of sight, like we don't want to be seen. So maybe we did something embarrassing or disgraceful or maybe there's trouble out there, like at work or in society or something that we don't want to be involved in, something we don't want to be connected in for a while. So we can say, "I'm going to lie low." |
| The idea with this is that it's temporary. We're not going to lie low forever. Usually, we lie low for a short period of time and then we come back to our regular way of living life and doing things. |
| The second variation is "to lie around." |
| To lie around |
| This can refer to two things, (1) that an object is in a place it's not usually in, or (2) to refer to a person doing nothing, absolutely nothing. They lie on the bed or they lie on the sofa and do nothing. |
| Examples: |
| "My phone is lying around here somewhere." |
| "I just want to lie around all weekend." |
| So, in the first example sentence, we see it refers to a phone in a place where it's not supposed to be. So maybe my phone has a specific spot in my house, I always put my phone here, but now, it's not there, I'm looking for it, so I can say, "My phone is lying around here somewhere. I don't know where." |
| In the second example sentence, it's about a person doing nothing, like I just want to lie around all weekend. That means I want to do nothing, I want to relax all weekend, maybe lying in bed or lying on my sofa, lying on the beach, perhaps. So this means doing nothing, relaxing! |
| Okay. So, those are a few new ways I hope to use the verb "lie." There are lots of different ways to use this verb, so if you have any questions or comments or if you want to try to make some example sentences, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. |
| Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye! |
| No lies were told in the making of this episode... to my knowledge. |
Comments
Hide