Is 'lain' on the wane?

I came across “lain” the other day in a book I’m reading. Here’s the sentence from the 1968 dystopian novel “The Wall” by Marlen Haushofer: “Bella had lain down and gone to sleep.”

It struck me as odd. Not because it was wrong. On the contrary, the translator who worked from the original German got it exactly right. The reason it struck me as odd was, well, how often do you see “lain” these days? If my experience is any indication, “lain” is fading away along with “swum” and “drunk” (the verb participle, not the adjective — that form of “drunk” remains in high demand).

I figured that “lain” had everything to do with the book’s publication date. Surely, back in the middle of the last century — the heyday of grammar prescriptivism — people were still keen on past participles like “lain.” To confirm my suspicion, I checked Google’s Ngram Viewer, which shows the frequency with which words show up in print over the years. To my great surprise, “lain” is about twice as popular now as it was in the late ’60s — at least in published writing.

This is more than just a mildly interesting factoid. It’s a clue about how to use the language well today. Had Ngram Viewer shown that “lain” was on the decline, there would be little need to worry about it. Language changes, and when people stop using, for example, “forsooth,” this adverb meaning “in truth” does not belong at the top of your to-learn list. But Ngram Viewer shows “lain” is still relevant, which means it’s worth learning.

“Lain” is the past participle of “lie” in the meaning of “to recline” (not to speak untruth). A past participle is different from a simple past tense. I find it easiest to think of the past participle as the one that goes with some form of “have,” as in, “She has lain under the veranda for hours” and “She had lain there all day yesterday, too.”

The technical terms for these verb tenses can add to the confusion. “She has lain” is an example of the present perfect tense — even though it happened in the past. But “has” is in the present, hence the name present perfect. On the other hand, “she had lain” is in the past perfect tense, indicated by the past-tense “had.” In either case, the word “perfect” means the action is completed.

There’s also a future perfect tense, “She will have lain,” which means the action will be completed at a point in the future.

All these use the past participle form of the verb. For many verbs, the past participle and the simple past tense are identical: Yesterday he walked, in the past he has walked. But irregular verbs like “lie” go their own way. For “lie,” the past participle is “lain” and the simple past tense is “lay.” So yesterday he lay, in the past he has lain.

This of course makes it easy to confuse the past tense of “lie” with the verb “lay,” which is another word entirely. Unlike “lie,” which is an intransitive verb, “lay” is transitive, meaning you do it to an object, like a book: Lay the book on the table.

“Lay” has its own past forms. Yesterday he laid the book on the table and in the past he has laid the book on the table.” Notice that for “lay,” the past tense and past participle are identical: laid.

If you forget all this, you can always find it in a dictionary. Just look up the main verb, like “lie,” and next to it you’ll see the past tense and, if the past participle is different, that immediately follows: lie, lay, lain. If you want to do like they did in the ’60s, it’s that easy.

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