mendacity

noun

men·​dac·​i·​ty men-ˈda-sə-tē How to pronounce mendacity (audio)
plural mendacities
1
: the quality or state of being mendacious
to blow the whistle on mendacity and hypocrisyGeoffrey Wolff
2
: lie
mendacities of the singer's manager

Examples of mendacity in a Sentence

highly fictionalized “memoirs” in which the facts were few and the mendacities many you need to overcome this deplorable mendacity, or no one will ever believe anything you say
Recent Examples on the Web Nonetheless, some level of mendacity is expected among informants working in a part of the world where misinformation is commonplace, forcing law enforcement officials to sift for germs of useful intelligence. Kenneth P. Vogel, New York Times, 21 Feb. 2024 From its inception, back in 2012, Mann’s relentless litigation has been marked out by an unlovely mixture of mendacity and egomania. The Editors, National Review, 9 Feb. 2024 Because Santos is unabashed about his desire for attention and well-versed in pop cultural vernacular, he’s built a cult following, erasing his history of greed, almost comically compulsive mendacity, and abhorrent transphobic and anti-Semitic comments from the public imagination. Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone, 6 Jan. 2024 Morris has made a career out of finding truth in the apocryphal, in cutting through layers of delusion and mendacity or at least bringing the artificiality of those layers to the surface. Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Sep. 2023 In all seriousness, this kind of mendacity tends to catch up to a person. Roxane Gay, New York Times, 1 Sep. 2023 The finding might mean that regular liars are predisposed to mendacity due to their unusual brain structure (nature, egg) or that the structure developed through practice (nurture, chicken). Paul Tullis, Town & Country, 30 Apr. 2023 Though Hollywood lies about our ability to detect lies, psychologists and experienced police interrogators can catch mendacity only slightly better than chance would predict, and hardly better than the rest of us. Paul Tullis, Town & Country, 30 Apr. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mendacity.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1540, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of mendacity was circa 1540

Dictionary Entries Near mendacity

Cite this Entry

“Mendacity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mendacity. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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