"Othello error" meaning in English

See Othello error in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Othello errors [plural]
Etymology: From Shakespeare's play Othello, in which the title character misinterprets his wife's distress as proof of her infidelity. Head templates: {{en-noun}} Othello error (plural Othello errors)
  1. An erroneous conclusion that someone is lying based on signs of stress. Categories (topical): William Shakespeare

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Othello error meaning in English (2.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From Shakespeare's play Othello, in which the title character misinterprets his wife's distress as proof of her infidelity.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Othello errors",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Othello error (plural Othello errors)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
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          "parents": [
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          "kind": "other",
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          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "William Shakespeare",
          "orig": "en:William Shakespeare",
          "parents": [
            "Authors",
            "Individuals",
            "Literature",
            "People",
            "Culture",
            "Entertainment",
            "Writing",
            "Human",
            "Society",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "All topics",
            "Communication",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1995, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, National Academy of Arbitrators",
          "text": "Out of such turmoil, it must be expected that some significant percent of Othello errors (false positives) will subsequently be improperly scored as hits when innocent subjects \"confess\" in return for a reduced charge.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Klaus Fiedler, Social Communication, page 327",
          "text": "The relatively low accuracy rates for detecting truths in CQT polygraph research (discussed before) is perhaps the result of the Othello error (Ofshe & Leo, 1997).",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Kelly D. Harrison, Forensic Interviewing: For Law Enforcement, page 75",
          "text": "Ekman said the Othello error stems from a truthful person being afraid of not being believed.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Timothy R. Levine, Encyclopedia of Deception, page 740",
          "text": "The Othello error is a common occurrence in traditional lie detection, which departs from the stress-based approach to lying.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An erroneous conclusion that someone is lying based on signs of stress."
      ],
      "id": "en-Othello_error-en-noun-hjORY~NQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "erroneous",
          "erroneous"
        ],
        [
          "conclusion",
          "conclusion"
        ],
        [
          "lying",
          "lie"
        ],
        [
          "stress",
          "stress"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Othello error"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From Shakespeare's play Othello, in which the title character misinterprets his wife's distress as proof of her infidelity.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Othello errors",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Othello error (plural Othello errors)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English eponyms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:William Shakespeare"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1995, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, National Academy of Arbitrators",
          "text": "Out of such turmoil, it must be expected that some significant percent of Othello errors (false positives) will subsequently be improperly scored as hits when innocent subjects \"confess\" in return for a reduced charge.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Klaus Fiedler, Social Communication, page 327",
          "text": "The relatively low accuracy rates for detecting truths in CQT polygraph research (discussed before) is perhaps the result of the Othello error (Ofshe & Leo, 1997).",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Kelly D. Harrison, Forensic Interviewing: For Law Enforcement, page 75",
          "text": "Ekman said the Othello error stems from a truthful person being afraid of not being believed.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Timothy R. Levine, Encyclopedia of Deception, page 740",
          "text": "The Othello error is a common occurrence in traditional lie detection, which departs from the stress-based approach to lying.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An erroneous conclusion that someone is lying based on signs of stress."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "erroneous",
          "erroneous"
        ],
        [
          "conclusion",
          "conclusion"
        ],
        [
          "lying",
          "lie"
        ],
        [
          "stress",
          "stress"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Othello error"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (a644e18 and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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