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Past tense of “lay”

🥚 To put something down carefully; to produce eggs.

Number 87 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both laid. Recognising it is the priority.

Mistakes people make with “lay”

Not “layed”. Lay does not take -ed — the past simple is laid, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Do not confuse it with…

You always lay something: lay the table, laid the groundwork. If there is no object, the verb you want is lie (lie · lay · lain). Native speakers get this wrong constantly, which is why it feels so slippery.

See “lie” →

Phrases you will actually hear

These are worth learning whole. A verb sticks far better inside a phrase somebody would really say than on its own in a table.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, laid. Half the work disappears: learn lay · laid and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — She laid the baby on the bed. is the past simple, The hen has laid two eggs. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

There is no tidy rule connecting lay to laid — this is a verb you memorise as a pair and stop analysing. The consolation is that it is a pair and not a trio: layed is the only wrong answer worth guarding against.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: