raised/rose

Much like lay and lie, we have another transitive-intransitive verb situation on our hands. Darn it. I lost you with more grammar language again. Strike that! I meant cat riding a skateboard! Puppies snowboarding! Donkeys driving speedboats! Back with me? Okay, let’s dive in.

We’re working with two different words here: raise and rise. Both mean to move upward, of course, but the difference is whether the subject is moving or the subject is moving an object.

“Raise” is the transitive verb (stay with me!). It requires an object. For example, she raises her head; we raised a glass.

“Rise” is the intransitive verb (You’ve come this far. Hang on!). It doesn’t require an object. For example, the sun rises in the morning; I rose out of my bed.

You can see from my examples that “raised” is the past tense of “raise” and “rose” is the past tense of “rise.”

Of course, you have to keep a look out for “razed” as well, but that is a whole other story. We’ll leave that destruction to another day.