Other forms: lies, lay, lying, lied, lain
To lie is to say something you know is not true. The dent in the car door, the homework that was definitely handed in, the friend who says the trousers fit. Small lies and large ones take the same verb.
The noun is the same word: tell a lie, a pack of lies, a white lie that is small and kind. This lie is regular, lie, lied, has lied, and that matters, because the other lie, the one about being flat, goes lie, lay, has lain: 'I lied to my boss' but 'I lay on the sofa'. That second lie also means to be situated, as in 'the village lies east of the river', and to be found in something, as in 'the problem lies in the wiring'. Neither lie takes an object, so you lie to someone and never 'lie someone'. The verb that does take one is lay: you lay a table, and you lie down.
1verbuntruthTo say something you know is not true.~20%
“He lied about where he had been all afternoon.”
2nounfalsehoodA statement made by someone who knows it is untrue.~10%
“It started as a small lie and grew for a month.”
synonyms: untruth, falsehood, fib
3verbmoveTo be in, or move into, a flat resting position.~2%
“The dog lies in the sun all afternoon.”
4verbsituatedTo be situated in a place, or to be found in something.~68%
“The border lies twenty miles further north.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The origin recorded here belongs to the other lie, the one about lying flat. Middle English lien comes from Old English liċġan, from Proto-Germanic *ligjaną and the Proto-Indo-European root *legʰ-, which is behind German liegen, Dutch liggen and Danish ligge. The lie you tell is a separate word that ended up sounding the same.
Proto-Indo-European
*legʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*ligjaną
Proto-West Germanic
*liggjan
Old English
liċġan
Middle English
lien
English, today
lie
From Middle English lien, liggen, from Old English liċġan, from Proto-West Germanic liggjan, from Proto-Germanic ligjaną, from Proto-Indo-European legʰ-. 2 Cognate with yol lee, lidge (“to lie”), frr lade, lai, laie, lei, lii, läde, läie (“to lie; to lay”), stq lääse (“to lie; to lay”), West Frisian lizze (“to lie”), gsw ligge (“to lie”), gmw-cfr lijje (“to lie”), Dutch and nds-nl liggen (“to lie”), German liegen (“to lie”), German Low German ligge, liggen (“to lie”), lb leien (“to lie”), Yiddish ליגן (“to lie”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ligge (“to lie”), Faroese and Icelandic liggja (“to lie”), Norwegian Nynorsk ligge, liggja, liggje (“to lie”), Swedish ligga (“to lie”), Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌲𐌰𐌽 (“to lie, to rest”); and with Irish laigh, luigh (“to lie”), gv lhie (“lie; lay”), Scottish Gaelic laigh (“lie; lay”), xfa 𐌋𐌄𐌂𐌄𐌕 (“he lies down”), Latin lectus (“bed”), spx 𐌅𐌄𐌉𐌀𐌕 (“to lie”), Ancient Greek λέχομαι (“to lie down”), Albanian lag (“band, encampment, troop”), be ляжа́ць (“to lie”), Bulgarian лежа́ (“to lie”), Czech ležet (“to lie”), mk лежи (“to lie”), Polish leżeć (“to lie”), Russian лежа́ть (“to lie”), Serbo-Croatian лѐжати, lèžati (“to lie”), Slovene ležáti (“to lie”), Ukrainian лежа́ти (“to lie”), txb lyäk- (“to lie”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA