lie

en-verb

lie (third-person singular simple present lies, present participle lying, simple past lay or laid, past participle lain or laid or (obsolete) lien)

lie See usage notes. (canonical)
lies (present singular third-person)
lying (participle present)
lay (past)
laid (past)
lain (participle past)
laid (participle past)
lien (obsolete participle past)
lie (infinitive)

From Middle English lien, liggen, from Old English liċġan, from Proto-West Germanic *liggjan, from Proto-Germanic *ligjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ-.
Cognate with West Frisian lizze, Dutch liggen, German liegen, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ligge, Swedish ligga, Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian Nynorsk liggja, Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌲𐌰𐌽 (ligan); and with Latin lectus (“bed”), Irish luí, Russian лежа́ть (ležátʹ), Albanian lag (“troop, band, encampment”).
As a noun for position, the noun has the same etymology above as the verb.

cog

a corresponding transitive version of this word

The Wind is lowd, and will not lie till the Ship be cleard of the dead.

c. 1607–1608, William Shakeſpeare, The Late, And much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: Imprinted at London for Henry Goſſon, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

To be still or quiet, like one lying down to rest.


lie

From Middle English lie, from Old English lyġe (“lie, falsehood”), from Proto-Germanic *lugiz (“lie, falsehood”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewgʰ- (“to tell lies, swear, complain”). Cognate with Old Saxon luggi (“a lie”), Old High German lugī, lugin (“a lie”) (German Lüge), Danish løgn (“a lie”), Bulgarian лъжа́ (lǎžá, “а lie”), Russian ложь (ložʹ, “а lie”), Czech lež (“a lie”), Middle Polish łeż (“a lie”), Serbo-Croatian laž (“a lie”).

der

I knew he was telling a lie by his facial expression.

Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies.

1840 May 5, Thomas Carlyle, “Lecture I. The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology.”, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship and The Heroic in History, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1840, →OCLC, page 4:

An intentionally false statement; an intentional falsehood.


liar

From Middle English lier, liere, lyere, liȝer, lieȝer, legher, from Old English lēgere, lēogere (“liar, false witness, hypocrite”), from Proto-West Germanic *leugārī, from Proto-Germanic *leugārijaz (“liar”), from *leuganą (“to lie”) + *-ārijaz, equivalent to lie + -ar. More at lie.

The Swabber is to keep the Cabbins, and all the Rooms of the Ship clean within board, and the Liar to do the like without board. The Liar holds his Place but for a week; and he that is first taken with a Lie upon a Monday morning, […] for that week he is under the Swabber, and meddles not with making clean the Ship within board, but without.

1703, Sir William Monson, Sir William Monson's Naval Tracts in Six Books, page 348:

The swabber, perhaps the lowliest position on the ship, was responsible for cleaning the decks. By tradition, each Monday a new crewmember was appointed the liar—the first person caught telling a lie the previous week.

2005, Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers, page 35:

(nautical, obsolete) A swabber responsible for cleaning the outside parts of the ship rather than the cabins, a role traditionally assigned to a person caught telling a lie the previous week.


mendacious

en-adj

mendacious (comparative more mendacious, superlative most mendacious)

more mendacious (comparative)
most mendacious (superlative)

Borrowed from Middle French mendacieux, from Latin mendācium (“lie, untruth”), from mendāx (“lying”).

(of a person) Lying, untruthful or dishonest.


fib

Unknown. Probably from fable; compare fibble-fable (“nonsense”).

"Oh! you dreadful fib," said Flora.


porky

When she turned up at the lab, she gave us a sprawling prepared presentation relying heavily on anecdotal evidence, where it wasn't relying on skewed statistics, unfounded claims and outright porkies.

2007, Christopher Brookmyre, Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, →ISBN, page 203:

Cockney rhyming slang
Cockney rhyming slang


fraud

en-noun

fraud (countable and uncountable, plural frauds)

From Middle English fraude (recorded since 1345), from Old French fraude, a borrowing from Latin fraus (“deceit, injury, offence”).


mendacity

mendacity (countable and uncountable, plural mendacities)

From Late Latin mendacitas, from Latin mendāx (“deceitful, deceptive, lying”) + -itās (suffix forming nouns indicating a state of being). Mendāx is derived from mentior (“to deceive, lie”) (from mēns, mentis (“mind; intellect; judgment, reasoning”), from Proto-Indo-European *méntis (“thought”)) + -āx (suffix forming adjectives expressing a tendency or inclination), or from Proto-Indo-European *mend- (“to fault”).

suffix

Mendacity is not a uniform offence: it changes its colour according to the nature and substance of the offence to which it is rendered or endeavoured to be rendered subservient. Mendacity, employed in drawing down upon an innocent head the destroying sword of justice, is murder: murder, encompassed with all its correspondent terror. Mendacity, employed in the obtainment of money, is but depredation. Yet, while predatory mendacity is punished with death, the punishment for the murderous mendacity is in comparison but a flea-bite.

1817, Jeremy Bentham, “Swear Not at All. Mat[thew] v. 34.”, in “Swear Not at All:” Containing an Exposure of the Needlessness and Mischievousness, as well as Antichristianity, of the Ceremony of an Oath: …, London: Sold by R. Hunter, St. Paul's Churchyard, →OCLC, § 14 (Succedanea—True Securities Substitutible to this False One), pages 75–76:

[…] Treating the assertion of the witness as the effect, he [Pierre-Simon Laplace] considers as its two possible causes, the veracity or mendacity of the witness on the particular occasion, that is, the truth or falsity of the fact.

1843, John Stuart Mill, “Of the Grounds of Disbelief”, in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. […], volume II, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], →OCLC, § 5, page 196:

Big Daddy: […] Think of all the lies I got to put up with!—Pretenses! Ain't that mendacity? Having to pretend stuff you don't think or feel or have any idea of?

1955 March 24 (first performance), Tennessee Williams [pseudonym; Thomas Lanier Williams III], Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, published in Jack Gaver, editor, Critics’ Choice: New York Drama Critics’ Circle Prize Plays 1935–55, New York, N.Y.: Hawthorn Books, 1955, →OCLC, Act II, page 652, column 2

So now the hard Brexiters say, with astonishingly cynical mendacity, that Britain would be better off going it alone.

2017 March 27, “The Observer view on triggering article 50: As Britain hurtles towards the precipice, truth and democracy are in short supply”, in The Observer, London, archived from the original on 2017-05-17:

A shifty or unreliable politician may hide their mendacity behind deceit, fabrication on confabulation, or by rehearsed counter-attack that simply ignores the questions but makes imputations against the other.

2019 March 23, Jack Waterford, “Prime Minister's ever-diminishing credibility”, in The Canberra Times, Canberra:

(uncountable) The fact or condition of being untruthful; dishonesty.

лъжливост

The scandalous bronze-lacker age, of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies and mendacities, will have to run its course, till the Pit swallow it.

1858, Thomas Carlyle, “Visit to Dresden”, in History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great. … In Four Volumes, volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly, →OCLC, book VI, page 30:

Though the rebels had utterly failed in their purposes, having accomplished nothing but the temporary disabling of two lightly armed vessels, and had retreated before the approach of the only formidable vessel there, they formally, and with a mendacity equalled only by some of their own efforts in that direction, proclaimed that they had "driven out of sight, for a time, the entire hostile fleet," and that the blockade of the port of Charleston was raised.

1875, John Howard Hinton, Samuel L[orenzo] Knapp, John O. Choules, William A. Crafts, chapter CXXXIII, in History of the United States of America, from the First Settlement of the Country. By John Howard Hinton, A.M. With Additions by Samuel L. Knapp, Esq., and John O. Choules, D.D. And a Continuation from the Inauguration of President Pierce to the Inauguraion of President Grant. By William A. Crafts, A.M., volume III, Boston, Mass.: Samuel Walker and Company, →OCLC, page 481, column 1:

He would have you believe that every error we make is deliberate, that journalists have somehow ginned up a unified conspiracy of lies and mendacities against him.

2018, Jack Shafer, “Donald Trump’s Fake News Mistake”, in Politico:

(countable) A deceit, falsehood, or lie.


whopper

When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, […]

1894, Mark Twain, chapter XII, in Tom Sawyer Abroad:

Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory.

1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

Isuzu Inc. hit pay dirt in the late '80s with its series of “Joe Isuzu” spots, featuring an oily, Satanic-looking salesman who told whoppers about Isuzu's genuine llama-skin upholstery and ability to run on tapwater.

1997 [1990], David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

(informal) An outrageous or blatant lie.


fraudster

2016 Eric Andrew-Gee Why and how Ontarians change their names in the 21st century The Globe and Mail
With a few exceptions, all those changes were published in the Ontario Gazette, a little-read compendium of government business that comes out every week. The province requires this by law, as do most Canadian jurisdictions, nominally to thwart fraudsters and deadbeats.

CPS MerseyCheshire welcomes the jailing of Helen Dove who conned her friend into giving up her job for a dream post that never existed. Kimberley McDonnell lost around £50,000 because of the fraudster.

2020 January 29, “Woman jailed for conning her friend into giving up her job for a dream post that never existed”, in CPS Mersey-Cheshire, London: Crown Prosecution Service, retrieved 2020-01-30:

Northern has made it harder for fraudsters to cheat checks on barcode season tickets. The operator has made it impossible for people to screenshot tickets from within the Northern app and then share the tickets for others to use.

2023 February 22, “Network News: Northern thwarts barcode cheats”, in RAIL, number 977, page 25:

a person who practices fraud; a swindler.

pathological liar

not to be confused; differing neuropsychological mechanisms


faker

Sonic: I found you, faker!

2001 June 23, Sonic Team USA, Sonic Adventure 2, Sega, published 2001:

faker: A friendly track acting as a hostile for exercise purposes. (STANAG 1241)

2011, APP-6C: NATO Joint Military Symbology, page 555:

(military, by extension) A friendly unit (usually aircraft) that acts as a hostile unit in a military exercise.

He has been lagged for beaker hunting, was a mushroom faker [umbrella seller], has been on the steel for snamming a wedge sneezer; […]

1859, Snowden's Magistrates Assistant, page 497:

Yet the faker is not an unpopular visitor to the country fair. On the contrary, a country fair at which was not heard the stentorian shouts of the faker to "come on, boys; here's the chance to make your fortune," would be considered a dismal failure.

1906, Clifton Rodman Wooldridge, The Grafters of America: Who They are and how They Work, page 248:

All the doctor has to do nowadays is to read the labels on the bottles and boxes of samples the faker brings him.

1909 May, G. Frank Lydston, “Honor to Whom Honor is Due”, in The Medical Standard, volume 32, page 248:

Business interests citizens against the food adulterator are severely hampered and injured and the "patent-medicine” faker.

1912 June, Locomotive Engineers Journal, volume 46, number 6, page 535:

A snake oil salesman; one who makes exaggerated claims about a product he sells.


likely story

He told me he couldn't come because his budgie had fallen ill. A likely story!

Used to suggest that someone's story or excuse is a lie.


pack of lies

(idiomatic) Total lies, complete untruth