mendacity

Noun

mendacity (countable and uncountable, plural mendacities)

1. (uncountable) The fact or condition of being untruthful; dishonesty.
   • Mendacity is not a uniform offence: it changes its colour according to the nature and substance of the offence to which it is rendered or endeavoured to be rendered subservient. Mendacity, employed in drawing down upon an innocent head the destroying sword of justice, is murder: murder, encompassed...1817, Jeremy Bentham, “Swear Not at All. Mat[thew] v. 34.”, in “Swear Not at All:” Containing an Exposure of the Needlessness and Mischievousness, as well as Antichristianity, of the Ceremony of an...
   • […] Treating the assertion of the witness as the effect, he [Pierre-Simon Laplace] considers as its two possible causes, the veracity or mendacity of the witness on the particular occasion, that is, the truth or falsity of the fact.1843, John Stuart Mill, “Of the Grounds of Disbelief”, in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific...
2. (countable) A deceit, falsehood, or lie.
   • The scandalous bronze-lacker age, of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies and mendacities, will have to run its course, till the Pit swallow it.1858, Thomas Carlyle, “Visit to Dresden”, in History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great. … In Four Volumes, volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly, →OCLC, book VI...
   • Though the rebels had utterly failed in their purposes, having accomplished nothing but the temporary disabling of two lightly armed vessels, and had retreated before the approach of the only formidable vessel there, they formally, and with a mendacity equalled only by some of their own efforts in...1875, John Howard Hinton, Samuel L[orenzo] Knapp, John O. Choules, William A. Crafts, chapter CXXXIII, in History of the United States of America, from the First Settlement of the Country. By John...