"Sit on a couch and look at a wall"
to
"Laying on the couch and looking at the wall"
loses a lot somehow in a hard-to-pin-down way. It's almost an impressively efficient butchering
"Lay" is from Middle English lay, from Old French lai, from Latin laicus, from Ancient Greek λαϊκός (laïkós).
In English, "sit" feels immediate and active where "lay" is passive and indirect. The distinction is both important and rooted in history.
It is incredibly stupid that we still have editors trying to force English poetry into Latinate forms almost a millenium after the battle of Hastings and all the consequent Anglo/Norman jockeying for position.
'lay, v.1 General sense: To cause to lie.
[OE. lęcgan = OFris. ledsa, lega, leia, OS. leggian (Du. leggen), OHG. lecken, legen (MHG., mod.G. legen), ON. legja (Sw. lägga, Da. lægge), Goth. (= OTeut.) lagjan, f. lag- ablaut-variant of OTeut. leg-: see lie v.'
OE = Old English, OFris.= Old Frisian etc.
As a verb, "lay it down" has Germanic roots, e.g. "liegen". The Greek cognate seems to be "lexos", "bed". (All this from Skeat's etymological dictionary.)
This is actually one of my favorite games to play with friends, taking a word and talking about it's connotations, or contrasting it with another similar word. Nothing super academic, just our own thoughts and feelings and examples of use.
Have fun digging into that one!
Fortunately I have read only a few of his posthumous works.
edit: changed very little to few
He removes the testicles while leaving the valuable meat and fat entirely unblemished.