Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The condition of being mendacious; untruthfulness.
  • noun A lie; a falsehood.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being mendacious; a disposition to lie or deceive; habitual lying.
  • noun A falsehood; a lie.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being mendacious; a habit of lying.
  • noun A falsehood; a lie.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The fact or condition of being untruthful; dishonesty.
  • noun A lie, deceit or falsehood.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the tendency to be untruthful

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From post-classical Latin mendacitas, from Latin mendāx ("lying").

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Examples

Comments

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  • great word from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

    March 30, 2007

  • "He spoke in the hoarse, cadenced tones of a lifelong teller of tales--one of those devine fools born to merge memory and mendacity into dreams as airily gorgeous as cobwebs strung with drops of dew." From Stephen King's The Wastelands

    January 1, 2011