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  • Grrr, people saying 'lay' when they mean 'lie' really grinds my gears. It shouldn't, but it does. Makes people sound like chickens, claiming to be laying somewhere. I blame Snow Patrol.

  • Grrr, people saying 'lay' when they mean 'lie' really grinds my gears. It shouldn't, but it does. Makes people sound like chickens, claiming to be laying somewhere. I blame Snow Patrol.

    Erm, this is grammatically correct, and the verb used is 'to lie'. The sentence is a second conditional, which calls for the use of the indicative past ('lay') in the subordinate ('if') clause and the conditional in the main clause.

    I agree with you that the conflation of 'lie' and 'lay', especially in American English, is regrettable, but this is not an example of it.

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