Word.ws English Dictionary

blue lie

blue lie noun: a lie told by a police officer in order to get someone to comply with his or her wishes, thereby avoiding the use of force.

Noun

blue lie (plural blue lies)

  1. A lie told by a police officer in order to get someone to comply with his or her wishes, thereby avoiding the use of force.
    • Blue lies are different from police placebos in that they are not told to help or comfort the person lied to but, rather, to exert control1984 March, Carl B. B Klockars, “Blue lies and police placebos: The moralities of police lying”, in American Behavioral Scientist
    • Hence the individuals most likely to become the dupes of blue lies are those who do not respond submissively to the power and authority of the police or to non-deceptive attempts at persuasion.1994, J. A. Barnes, John Arundel Barnes, Jack Goody, A Pack of Lies: Towards a Sociology of Lying, page 43
  2. A lie told to protect the reputation of one's group or organization.
    • About Manete's evidence, that Francis had asked him why he did not join the people, why he did not fight, Francis said, "No, he is telling a blue lie."1990, Prakash Diar, The Sharpeville six, page 157
    • Fu et al. (2013) found that Chinese participants judged blue lies less negatively than did their American counterparts, and that this difference increased with age.2014, Elizabeth J. Robinson, Shiri Einav, Trust and Skepticism, page 90

Examples of blue lie in a sentence

  • Blue lies are those used to control the person or to make the job easier in situations where force could be used.2011, Joycelyn M. Pollock, Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice, page 141:
  • Blue lies are so pervasive that even former prosecutors have described them as "commonplace" and "prevalent."2015, Austin Sarat, Law and Lies, page 54:
  • To protect the company, you feel you have to tell a blue lie.2019, Kate Hartley, Communicate in a Crisis:

Forms of blue lie

pluralblue lies

Origin of blue lie

Coined by Carl Klockars referring to the blue color of American police uniforms. Klockars used the term for a lie told in order to achieve compliance without resorting to force. However, the term later became generalized to all lies told by police, and then especially to the lies told by police officers to conceal questionable behavior on the part of police force. By extension, the term came to mean any lie told to protect the reputation of one's group or organization, even when not told by a police officer.

Questions about blue lie

What does blue lie mean?
Blue lie means a lie told by a police officer in order to get someone to comply with his or her wishes, thereby avoiding the use of force.
How do you use blue lie in a sentence?
Blue lies are those used to control the person or to make the job easier in situations where force could be used.
What part of speech is blue lie?
Blue lie is a noun.
What is the plural of blue lie?
The plural of blue lie is blue lies.

Words near blue lie in the dictionary

  1. Blue Lagoons
  2. Blue Lake
  3. blue law
  4. blue laws
  5. blue lead
  6. blue lie
  7. blue lies
  8. blue light
  9. blue light bandit
  10. blue light bandits
  11. blue light disco

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue lie (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “blue lie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blue_lie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.