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I was studying english and saw this sentence and i could not decide which of them would be better to use? (I am not a native just student)

Mesopotamia was suitable for ancient merchants, but the dangerous passages that … between the towns ... the pillage of many cowboys.

Options were like: lying/have meant - lie/meant - laid/would mean - lay/were meant - are lying/have meant

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    We have a sister site which is designed for better and faster answers to Qs of this type: [ELL.se]. – Dan Bron Nov 14 '18 at 17:58
  • Why in the world was this migrated when it was clearly a duplicate of an existing question on ELU? – Jason Bassford Nov 14 '18 at 21:29
  • Also see [How can I remember the difference between “lay” and “laid”?](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/23) and [Correct usage of “Lie” or “Lay” and their respective tenses](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/111306) – choster Nov 14 '18 at 22:53

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Lie is something you do to yourself, lay is what you do to other people or objects. "I'm going to lie down now." "The baby is tired, I should lay him down."

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    Right. _Lie_ meaning 'recline' is intransitive, whereas _lay_ is the causative of _lie_ (it means 'cause to lie'), and causatives are always transitive. This gets confusing because the past tense of _lie_ is _lay_ (the principal parts are _lie, lay, lain_), like its causative, which is a regular verb, with _-d_ past tense and participle (_lay, laid, laid_). And also by the fact that there's another, regular, verb _lie_ meaning 'tell an untruth'. Here's a [diagram of how it works inside](http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler//threekindsofword.pdf). – John Lawler Nov 14 '18 at 19:39
  • But for many speakers, _lie_ and _lay_ have mostly merged. – Colin Fine Nov 15 '18 at 00:08