#mendacious

[theyuniversity]

Mendacious 🗣️

(adj.) not telling the truth; lying or deceitful.

Nan smiled sweetly, but her mendacious excuse for missing dinner—“I was stuck in traffic”—fell apart when we saw her beach photos. ⛱️😂

It traces back to:

Latin mendax (lying, deceitful), from mendacium (a lie), rooted in mendum (fault, defect)—the same root that gives us “emend” (to correct errors).

It entered English in the early 17th century, likely through learned/literary use, and has retained its formal, slightly elevated tone ever since ... which is why it tends to appear in writing more than everyday speech.

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[vocabulary-polls]

mendacious

adjective: not telling the truth; lying.

example usage: The government issued mendacious propaganda.

my favorite example:

an aged life mendaciously smiling, its lips opened by vacated agonies; an aged poverty rotting under the sun, silently; an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules, the awful futility of our raison d'etre. -Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, Aime Cesaire

To what degree did you understand the word "mendacious" prior to reading the definition?

I fully understood what the word means and how to use it.

I mostly understood the meaning but would have trouble using it.

I vaguely understood the meaning, but not exactly.

I thought I understood, but the precise definition threw me off.

I'd heard it before, but that's about it.

This is my first time hearing it.

Other

Voting ended onMar 10, 2025

[jonesyjonesyjonesy]

reblog with a fun big word to use in conversation or writing

[mafaldaknows]

I just read that Katie Couric is following Paige Lorenz and Courtney VKobvich on IG?!?!When is this shit gonna stop! GOD!!!!

Hello, Anon:

Where’ve you been? That was weeks ago 🙃😆

Many people use social media to find information about certain topics or people. Kindly please consider the fact that follows on IG do not automatically indicate approval or admiration. Sometimes people are just nosy.

This sh*t will stop when it’s no longer financially beneficial to the outlets that publish lies about celebrities and to the trashy opportunists who tell them, which can only happen if people would just stop paying attention to these talentless, greedy, mendacious, fame-hungry glory hounds.

Attention is what they want. Why are we giving it so freely to them?

I realize in answering your ask that they’re getting some attention but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to call these a**holes talentless, greedy, mendacious, fame-hungry glory hounds.

Thanks for your question. 😊❤️🧿✨💪🔨

[mvaljean525]

NOT that on me the Cyprian fury fell, Last martyr of my love-ensanguined race; Not that my children drop the averted face When my name shames the silence; not that hell Holds me where nevermore his glance shall dwell Nightlong between my lids, my pulses race Through flying pines the tempest of the chase, Nor my heart rest with him beside the well.

Not that he hates me; not, O baffled gods - Not that I slew him! - yet, because your goal Is always reached, nor your rejoicing rods Fell ever yet upon insensate clods, Know, the one pang that makes your triumph whole Is, that he knows the baseness of my soul.

----

Phaedra

Edith Wharton  1862-1937

----

Graphic - Alexandre Cabanel  (1823–1889)

[definitedefinitions]

Mendacious

Men-dey-shuh s

-adjective

telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful: a mendacious person.

false or untrue: a mendacious report.

“The worst instance of both Orin’s mendacious idiocy and Mrs. Incandenza’s unwillingness to countenance an idiotic lie came one grisly day soon after Orin had finally gotten his vehicle operator’s license.”

-Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace

[theyuniversity]

Let’s not forget about this other long-nosed character with a penchant for being mendacious:

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[eliteprepsat]

Pronunciation: [men-DEY-shuhs]