How to do it right: put it down or lay it down

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Remember the correct option once and for all.

In modern literary Russian, there is no word "lay down". You will not find this verb in the Russian Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, edited by Doctor of Philology V. V. Lopatin.

However, just imagine, in some dictionaries the word “lay down” can still be found in the Explanatory Dictionary of D. N. Ushakov, 1935–1940. - Lie down. The Dictionary of Pronunciation and Stress Difficulties in Modern Russian even offers a Dictionary of Pronunciation and Stress Difficulties in Modern Russian - Lie to pronounce it with an emphasis on "o". And in the "Big Dictionary of Russian Sayings" they write the Big Dictionary of Russian Sayings - Put it on the back burner "put it on the back burner" and not put it off.

It is important to take into account that even in these sources the verb has the status of vernacular, dialectic, or refers to the correct version of "put".

Literate people use the lexeme "to lie down" only with a prefix or a postfix - the part of the word located after the end ("-sya" or "-s"). For example, "put", "offer" or "go to bed."

But sometimes the word "lay down" is found in classical literature. So the authors emphasize the simplicity, lack of education, peasant or provincial origin of the hero.

But he stays in it, he will not reconcile: his three hundred grams does not lie, like everyone else, on an unclean table in splashes, but on a washed rag.

A. I. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich"

Occasionally, this abusive word can be seen in jokes and jokes. Here is such an option that the Big Semi-Explanatory Dictionary of the Odessa Language offers us "The Big Semi-explanatory Dictionary of the Odessa Language":

Moishe is such a joker. Shouted: "I laid on you with a big device!" You might think that someone would rent him the device.

Don't use a profanity verb, because you won't find it in any modern academic vocabulary. The canons of the Russian language instruct us to "put". This means that it is only necessary to speak and write in this way.