Mendacity

By Deane Barker • • tags: definition •
Updates
This content has been updated 2 times since it was first published. The last update happened .

Definition: a lie or untruth

A “mendacity” can be a single thing someone says, or it can be a quality they possess.

Why I Looked It Up

From The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth:

Even accounting for whatever you believe to be the biases of fact checkers, they was no serious disputing that the volume and audacity of Trump’s mendacity had broken through America’s epistemic guardrails, such as they were.

Update

Added on

From an H.P. Lovecraft short story:

[…] genuine photographs – actual optical links with what they portrayed, and the product of an impersonal transmitting process with prejudice, fallibility, or mendacity.

Basically, photographs (in that era) don’t lie.

Update

Added on

In a ruling over a case of prosecutorial misconduct, the judge said:

McAfee ruled that either Wade or Willis would have to leave the case, as an “odor of mendacity remains” over the circumstances of their relationship.

Links to this – Prevaricate February 3, 2025
In some cases, this is just another way to say “lie.” In other cases, it’s just heavily implied that someone is leaving out important information or being specifically misleading. It comes from a Latin word meaning “to talk crookedly” or “to straddle.” Reminds me a bit of mendacity .
Links from this – The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth September 22, 2022
This is a polemic against misinformation. It was written post-Trump, and Trump informs and motivates a lot of it. The author is retaliating against what he sees as the basic corruption of truth. We’ve arrived at a point in society where we can simply deny any truth that we don’t like and limit...
Links from this – The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft May 10, 2023
This is an anthology of every work of narrative fiction H.P. Lovecraft wrote, in order. (I say “narrative fiction” because he apparently wrote a bunch of poetry that isn’t in this book.) I had always wondered about Lovecraft. I was familiar with “Call of Cthulhu,” the role-playing game. Then a few...