The first thing that caught my eye when I opened the New York Times on May 17, 2026 was the caption under a picture that showed a crowd of people clothed in tee shirts. A woman in the front center and a few other folks off to the side had their arms lifted in the air the way people do when praying at revivals. This is the caption beneath the photo:
People rose their hands in worship during Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise Thanksgiving, in Washington on Sunday.
No, they didn’t “rose” their hands. They raised their hands.
Rose is the past tense of the verb rise. The caption-writer wanted to convey the fact that the people lifted their hands into the air. The verb needed was raised.
This is a lay/lie type of verb error. In all my years, this is the first time I’ve encountered this type of error with raise and rise.
Raise
The most common use of raise is as a transitive verb.
A transitive verb takes a direct object. A direct object answers the question “What?” following the verb.
The people raised their arms.
Raised what? Their arms.
The direct object of raised in this sentence is their arms.
The principal forms of raise:
Present tense: raise, raises
Past tense: raised
Past perfect tense: (has) raised
Present participle: raising
Rise
Rise is an intransitive verb.
An intransitive verb is complete in itself. It will never have an object.
Like air, I’ll rise.
The principal forms of rise:
Present tense: rise, rises
Past tense: rose
Past perfect tense: (has) risen
Present participle: rising
Not just the NYTimes
Shocked to see such an error in the venerable Times, I browsed the web to see if I could find examples in other publications. To my astonishment, I found them. Lots of them.
The most prolific source of the grammatical error occurs on self-publishing fiction sites.
And when he finally got closer to him, they slowly rose their arms and wrapped him in a hug.
They took one step away from each other and rose their arms, putting themselves in a position in which they were able to fire an attack.
The demons kept speaking the spell out loud and rose their arms up, almost finishing the spell of breaking the seal she had cast upon her.
The error also appears in writing on sites concerned with current events and reviews.
The women joined hands, then rose their arms to the sky. (a tourism and culture site)
Starving, ragged, wearing yellow armbands, they rose their arms and approached, begging not to be shot.” (film history site)
. . . at a conference in Washington as his supporters [Richard Spencer’s] rose their arms to a Nazi salute. (news commentary site)
Confused idiom
On several historical sites, the phrase “rose their arms” seems to be a conflation of the use of the verb rise in the context of rebel and the idiom “to take arms against.”
They rose their arms and started to fight.
CLOSING NOTE
I must not have been the only reader to gaze with astonishment at the Sunday error in the Times cutline.
On Monday, a different photo illustrated the story on the prayer jubilee. In this photo, the people have their hands over their hearts and are said to be praying.