Lies

How to spell lies

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lies

What does lies mean?

1. verbIs positioned, located, or resting in a particular place (third-person singular).
2. nounFalse statements made deliberately to deceive.
3. verbDeliberately says something untrue in order to deceive (third-person singular).

Lies in a sentence

• verb

  The small town lies just beyond the river.

• noun

  The auditor exposed a series of lies in the financial report.

• verb

  He lies about his whereabouts whenever he is questioned.

• verb

  The answer to the problem lies in the original contract.

• noun

  His elaborate lies eventually unravelled in court.

• verb

  She never lies to her clients about the cost.

Where does lies come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word actually braids together two separate Old English roots that happen to look identical today. The 'recline or be positioned' sense descends from licgan, an Old English verb meaning 'to lie down or rest', which is a close Germanic relative of words like 'lay' and 'low'. The 'falsehood' sense comes from a different root, the Old English noun lyge and verb leogan, meaning 'to tell an untruth', also of solid Germanic stock. Both senses settled into the simple spelling 'lie' in Middle English, and the plural noun and the third-person verb both take the same -s ending to give 'lies'. The two meanings have stayed spelled the same for over a thousand years, which is why the real trap is grammatical (lie versus lay) rather than a matter of letters. Knowing they were once two distinct words helps explain why one 'lie' is something you do on a sofa and the other is something dishonest.

How the word is built

• lie (Old English origin)
• -s (plural noun ending / third-person singular verb ending)