Learn English – what is the right form of the verb “lay” or “lies”

lie-lay-lain-laidverbs

What is the right form of the verb in the following sentence?

The essence of the brilliant outcome {lay / lies} in the excellence of the team.

I think lies is right (third person singular adds an s), but I read "lay" in the writing source.

Best Answer

Lay and lie are two words with confusing forms (in real life people get these wrong all the time):

                                 present    past    past part.   -ing form

to lay - to put something down   lay(s)     laid    laid         laying
to lie - to rest or recline      lie(s)     lay     lain         lying

The way you are using it, you mean to lie (you can say "the brilliant outcome rests in the team's excellence", for example), so you want to use the present form of the verb, which is lies - if your sentence is describing something in the present:

The essence of the brilliant outcome lies in the excellence of the team.

If you were expressing this in past tense, you'd say

The essence of the brilliant outcome lay in the excellence of the team.

Reference.

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Learn English – His greatness – “lies” or “lay”

UPDATE: (to answers by VarunKN and miqdadamirali) While it is true that the sentence and most of the passage are in past tense, but the fact is that verbs must agree with their subject, and so that the verb lie should agree with its subject greatness. So, since greatness is still present and exists, therefore the verb should be written as lies

While clever, this is incorrect. His greatness lay in things that only held while he was alive. He is no longer alive and therefore no longer great. That is to say that he is no longer honest and simple with a pure heart devoid of malice, so he is no longer great.

Another point: even in cases where someone is still great, it is controvertible that he was great while alive. So lay is always correct. In some circumstances, he may still be great. In this case, the context is to talk about his characteristics while alive. His greatness in life is clearly past tense.

Or to put it another way, his pure heart made him great in life. If you also want him to be great in death, you need to give a more persistent reason. For example, the memory of his actions makes him great now. But that's not what the passage is saying. It's saying that when alive, he was great.

Learn English – For the first person( I ,We) we use simple tense form and for the third person (he,she) we use verb+s, but which tense form we use for second peson

Third person singular is different; all the others are the same. First person: I study, we study; second person: you (singular) study, you (plural) study; third person: he/she/it studies, they study.

An excerpt from Cengage.com, please see the entire page:

Subject-Verb Agreement
Simple Present Base Forms:  like    have    be      do

Singular                 
1st person: I               like    have    am      do
2nd person: you             like    have    are     do
3rd person: he, she, it     likes   has     is      does

Plural               
1st person: we              like    have    are     do
2nd person: you             like    have    are     do
3rd person: they            like    have    are     do

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Learn English – His greatness – “lies” or “lay”

Learn English – For the first person( I ,We) we use simple tense form and for the third person (he,she) we use verb+s, but which tense form we use for second peson

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