lying
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
An act or telling a lie or falsehood.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
lyingSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈlaɪɪŋ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An act or telling a lie or falsehood; the practice of telling lies.
The act of one who lies, or keeps low to the ground.
adjective
Tending to tell lies, untruthful, mendacious
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An act or telling a lie or falsehood; the practice of telling lies.
Used this way, lying is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It criticises, but without shouting.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use lying
- “She was not lying when she said she would be here by noon.”
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.