Word.ws English Dictionary

give the lie

give the lie verb: to respond to an insult, accusation, or falsehood by saying the offender is lying, particularly in the context of provoking a challenge to a duel.

Verb

give the lie (third-person singular simple present gives the lie, present participle giving the lie, simple past gave the lie, past participle given the lie)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive, transitive) To respond to an insult, accusation, or falsehood by saying the offender is lying, particularly in the context of provoking a challenge to a duel.
    • Say to the Court, it glowes,
      and shines like rotten wood;
      Say to the Church, it shewes
      whats good, and doth no good:
      If Church and Court reply,
      then giue them both the lye.c. 1592, Walter Raleigh, “The Lie”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), published 1608
    • They gave the Queen the Lye divers times, and uſed her with moſt deſpiteful Speeches.1593, Richard Bancroft, Daungerous positions and proceedings, published and practised within this iland of Brytaine
  2. Used in give the lie to.

Forms of give the lie

third-person singular presentgives the lie
present participlegiving the lie
pastgave the lie
past participlegiven the lie

Origin of give the lie

From give + the + lie, where lie is used in an obsolete sense to mean a claim that someone is lying.

Questions about give the lie

What does give the lie mean?
Give the lie means to respond to an insult, accusation, or falsehood by saying the offender is lying, particularly in the context of provoking a challenge to a duel.
What part of speech is give the lie?
Give the lie is a verb.
What is the past tense of give the lie?
The past tense of give the lie is gave the lie.

Words near give the lie in the dictionary

  1. give the finger
  2. give the fingers
  3. give the floor
  4. give the game away
  5. give the go-by
  6. give the lie
  7. give the lie to
  8. give the mitten to
  9. give the royal treatment
  10. give the sack
  11. give the stem

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give the 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-give the lie.ogg.

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