"false light" meaning in English

See false light in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-false light.ogg [Australia] Forms: false lights [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} false light (countable and uncountable, plural false lights)
  1. (idiomatic, countable) A point of view resulting in a misleading or inaccurate representation of a person, situation, or fact. Tags: countable, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-false_light-en-noun-thlVsYAP
  2. (law, uncountable) A cause of action arising under the common law where a person is portrayed in a way which, while not technically false, is misleading and likely to cause embarrassment to that person. Tags: uncountable Categories (topical): Law
    Sense id: en-false_light-en-noun-9Bv~GDBN Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 29 71 Topics: law

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for false light meaning in English (3.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "false lights",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
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      "expansion": "false light (countable and uncountable, plural false lights)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 11, in The Scarlet Letter",
          "text": "To the untrue man, the whole universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1883, George MacDonald, chapter 58, in Donal Grant",
          "text": "It was not I, but these things working in me—on my brain, making me see things in a false light!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1920, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 13, in The New Jerusalem",
          "text": "Some of the charges against them . . . are due merely to the false light in which they are regarded.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013 April 6, Richard A. Oppel Jr, “Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-05-22",
          "text": "Don Lehe, a Republican state representative from a rural district in Indiana, said online videos can cast farmers in a false light and give them little opportunity to correct the record.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A point of view resulting in a misleading or inaccurate representation of a person, situation, or fact."
      ],
      "id": "en-false_light-en-noun-thlVsYAP",
      "links": [
        [
          "point of view",
          "point of view"
        ],
        [
          "misleading",
          "misleading"
        ],
        [
          "inaccurate",
          "inaccurate"
        ],
        [
          "representation",
          "representation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, countable) A point of view resulting in a misleading or inaccurate representation of a person, situation, or fact."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Law",
          "orig": "en:Law",
          "parents": [
            "Justice",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "29 71",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2015 May 20, “Model Janice Dickinson Sues Bill Cosby For Defamation”, in CBS Los Angeles, retrieved 2015-05-22",
          "text": "Dickinson’s lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks unspecified damages on defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A cause of action arising under the common law where a person is portrayed in a way which, while not technically false, is misleading and likely to cause embarrassment to that person."
      ],
      "id": "en-false_light-en-noun-9Bv~GDBN",
      "links": [
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          "law",
          "law#English"
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        [
          "cause of action",
          "cause of action"
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        [
          "common law",
          "common law"
        ],
        [
          "embarrassment",
          "embarrassment"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(law, uncountable) A cause of action arising under the common law where a person is portrayed in a way which, while not technically false, is misleading and likely to cause embarrassment to that person."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "law"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "en-au-false light.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/87/En-au-false_light.ogg/En-au-false_light.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/En-au-false_light.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
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  "word": "false light"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English uncountable nouns"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "false lights",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
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      "expansion": "false light (countable and uncountable, plural false lights)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 11, in The Scarlet Letter",
          "text": "To the untrue man, the whole universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1883, George MacDonald, chapter 58, in Donal Grant",
          "text": "It was not I, but these things working in me—on my brain, making me see things in a false light!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1920, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 13, in The New Jerusalem",
          "text": "Some of the charges against them . . . are due merely to the false light in which they are regarded.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013 April 6, Richard A. Oppel Jr, “Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-05-22",
          "text": "Don Lehe, a Republican state representative from a rural district in Indiana, said online videos can cast farmers in a false light and give them little opportunity to correct the record.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A point of view resulting in a misleading or inaccurate representation of a person, situation, or fact."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "point of view",
          "point of view"
        ],
        [
          "misleading",
          "misleading"
        ],
        [
          "inaccurate",
          "inaccurate"
        ],
        [
          "representation",
          "representation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, countable) A point of view resulting in a misleading or inaccurate representation of a person, situation, or fact."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
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        "English uncountable nouns",
        "en:Law"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2015 May 20, “Model Janice Dickinson Sues Bill Cosby For Defamation”, in CBS Los Angeles, retrieved 2015-05-22",
          "text": "Dickinson’s lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks unspecified damages on defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A cause of action arising under the common law where a person is portrayed in a way which, while not technically false, is misleading and likely to cause embarrassment to that person."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "law#English"
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          "cause of action",
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        ],
        [
          "embarrassment",
          "embarrassment"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(law, uncountable) A cause of action arising under the common law where a person is portrayed in a way which, while not technically false, is misleading and likely to cause embarrassment to that person."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "law"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "en-au-false light.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/87/En-au-false_light.ogg/En-au-false_light.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/En-au-false_light.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "false light"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.