Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.   The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar”.

This is a popular passage in a speech delivered by Marcus Antonius in the Forum after the death of Julius Caesar.  He had gone to bury Caesar not to say things to praise or eulogise him.  Whatever evil things men do live even long after the persons have died; however, the good things they do are buried alongside their bodies, and forgotten.  That is the message portrayed in this speech.

‘To inter’ means ‘to bury’, ‘to deposit (a corpse) in the earth (in terra – earth). The principal parts are: ‘inter’ (Simple Present); ‘interred’ (Simple Past); ‘interring’ (Continuous).  The noun is ‘interment’ which is the act of interring or burying, especially with ceremony.

‘Intern’ (noun) can mean a recent medical graduate, resident and working under supervision in a hospital as part of his training (mainly American).  In Ghana, we call such people housemen.  Intern (noun) can also mean a person in any profession gaining practical experience under supervision.  Such a position is called ‘internship’. 

‘Intern’ (verb) can mean to confine as a prisoner, or to oblige to reside within confined limits in a country without permission to leave.  The principal parts are: ‘intern’ (Simple Present); ‘interned’ (Past); ‘interning’ (Continuous).  The noun is ‘internment’ which is the act of interning (confining) someone.  An ‘internment camp’ is also a ‘detention camp’.

A funeral is a serious matter in these parts of the world.  Funeral announcements should be carefully presented.  Note the preferred formulae … A wake or a watch or a vigil is held by relatives and friends beside (NOT: besides) the body of a dead person before interment or burial. 

It is NOT ‘wake-keeping’.  The body will lie in state during this occasion.  The body lies in state (Simple Present); The body lay in state yesterday (Past);  The body has lain in state (Perfect); The body is lying in state (Continuous).  

The preferred idiom is ‘to lie in state’, NOT ‘to be laid in state’.  Hence, the programme should not contain ‘laying in state’ BUT ‘lying in state’.  You can have ‘the body was laid on a bed’, ‘the body was laid on the floor’, ‘the body was laid on a mat’.  BUT the idiom ‘lying in state’ is fixed, immutable and dogged, even if it sounds illogical. 

In the ‘Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray is a stanza: “Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre”.  Poetic licence aside, “… in this neglected spot is laid…” is accepted because someone may have placed the body there.

 The body is laid to rest but read ‘The Epitaph’ “Here rests his head upon the lap of earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.  Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own”.  Note ‘Here rests his head’ and compare with ‘Here lies the body’.  The principal parts of to lay (a table, an egg, a block, a flower on a tomb, down tools) are lay (Simple Present); laid (Past); has (been) laid (Perfect); laying (Continuous).

The preferred idiom assumes the dead body or the remains (NOT: mortal remains) to ‘lie’ by itself.  When you go to a cemetery, you see the epitaph: ‘Here lies …’ NOT ‘Here is laid’, though the latter is grammatically correct. e.g. the epitaph John Wilmot wrote on King Charles II’s tomb was: “Here lies a great and mighty King whose promise none relies on; He never said a foolish thing nor ever did a wise one”.  We have written on these before, hence there would normally be no need to repeat them.

When Lady Macbeth ‘pretends’ to be alarmed at the sound of the bell (after her husband Macbeth had murdered King Duncan), she asks: “What’s the business, That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley The sleepers of the house? speak, speak! Macduff responds: “O gentle lady, ‘Tis not for you to hear what I can speak: The repetition in a woman’s ear Would murther as it fell”.

Someone says repetition “could show that the character is crazy, it could show guilt, and it could represent the author trying to make you believe what he believes”.  ‘Lie’ is intransitive: You lie on your bed.  ‘Lay’ is transitive: The hen lays an egg. We are not repeating because we are obsessed, impractical or guilty.

We are repeating these titbits because we want to try to make the readers believe what we believe; to remember what we remember, and to note what we note.

‘Old habits or old prejudices’, they say, ‘die hard’.  A die-hard is a person who stubbornly resists change, or tenaciously adheres to a seemingly outdated cause.  He may vehemently, often fanatically, oppose change.  He can be adamantine, implacable, intransigent, obdurate, uncompliant, unrelenting or ultraconservative.

Hence, if a newspaper will continue to use ‘internment’ where ‘interment’ would be preferable, or use ‘laying in state’ where ‘lying in state’ would be preferable, or use ‘wake-keeping’ where ‘wake’ would be preferable, what can we, as ordinary commentators, do?