Books in Canada

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS sentence? She crossed the room and lay an envelope on the table.

Yes, of course. The word lay is wrong. If the sentence were in the present tense it would have to be she lays an envelope, etc. But "she crossed the room" -- past tense -- so it has to be laid.

You knew that. Why don't some of Toronto's finest copy editors know it? Turn to page 44 of the hardcover or paperback edition of the Governor General's Award-winner The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje, published by McClelland & Stewart. "He lay his bandaged hand on her shoulder...." Now, it's possible that Ondaatje, one of the very best writers in Canada, wrote the sentence himself just as it stands. But I doubt it. I suspect his copy editor, because I've seen this odd and utterly incorrect usage around a lot lately, like a new variant of an old virus.

I can only surmise that the editor in question, always in search of elegance, felt that the word laid is vulgar, and decided that it would be nicer to use the form lay as the past tense of itself. Pity those two little verbs, lay and lie, already so sadly messed up, which now find themselves the source of a new confusion. I've seen it in other M & S books, and in HarperCollins, and Stoddart, and ....

But enough name-dropping. Here it is again, in case you forgot. The verb to lay, past tense and past participle laid, means to place or put down, and always takes an object. The verb to lie, past tense lay, past participle lain, means to recline, and never takes an object. (What do these reformist editors do when they come across the grammatically irreproachable phrase that must have inspired their fear of vulgarity? Do they change it to "get lain"?)

PECULIAR TO PARTICULAR. Has anyone else noticed that the word peculiar, in its older sense, is gradually being overtaken and replaced by the word particular? Not that it matters. Meaning does flow in and out of words over time, sometimes causing confusion, but more often just causing pique among usage specialists. But the case of peculiar is interesting. Its Latin root, peculium, meaning property in cattle, is related to pecunia, money; for many centuries it meant privately owned, independent, separately constituted. Little by little the sense of independent ownership gave way to the notion of singularity, oddness, or strangeness, and peculiar took on its usual present meaning except in the phrase peculiar to, which continued to be used to denote qualities or possessions that belonged exclusively to someone or something (as in "an affectation peculiar to Araminta" or "a smell peculiar to Grandma's house"). Now the word particular is creeping in. The Globe and Mail recently spoke of gynecology as "dealing with the diseases particular to women." There's no stopping a word when it wants to change its meaning, and peculiar has been overpowered by its own peculiarity.

THE IDIOTIC IDIOMATIC: I recently heard a lady on CBC-Radio recounting (I forget why) the plot of a fairy tale. It was one of those stories about a king with an unlikely number of beautiful daughters. Thinking she was using a sweetly archaic turn of phrase, the lady described the daughters as "each one lovelier than the next," which of course would mean that the first one was lovely, the next one slightly less so, the third hardly lovely at all, and so on down the line to the last poor misshapen, ill-favoured hag. The correct phrase is "each one lovelier than the last." Another creative CBC speaker conjured up a diverting image when, bored I suppose with the term mad as an intensifier, she described a last- minute scramble to complete a project as "a madcap rush." Can't you just picture it?

THINGS YOUR SPELL-CHECK won't tell you: I've noticed that lately writers are giving free reign to things, rather than free rein. The usual term is one of those old metaphors that refer to matters that used to be familiar but are no longer. In this case it refers to horses' harness, whether driving or riding I couldn't say. One inventive writer thought it was reign, but at least changed the idiom to make it logical, giving someone "free reign over the kitchen." Sounds imperious, if not absolutely monarchist. But it's certainly better to use it that way, rather than just flinging the phrase around without even asking yourself what it might mean.

THINGS YOUR SPELL-CHECK would tell you if you would only ask: There are three n's in drunkenness. There are only two e's in athlete -- pronounce it "athelete" if you must, but please don't spell it that way. (Confidential to Torontonians: there is only one g in Eglinton; Eglington does not exist.) And there are two n's in millennium. Until recently this was not a word that was in very common use, but in the run-up to the year 2000 it is being bandied about a lot, and by the time the third one gets here, we may all know how to spell it.

Rose Thorne is the pseudonym of a Toronto editor and writer.