A.Word.A.Day --mendacity

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mendacity

PRONUNCIATION:

(men-DAS-i-tee)

MEANING:

noun:
1. The quality of being untruthful: a tendency to lie.
2. A lie.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin mendac-, stem of mendax (lying), from mendum (fault or defect) that also gave us amend, emend, and mendicant. Earliest documented use: 1540.

USAGE:

"The story of the founding of the Mormon church in Ohio in 1830 and its unlikely trek from there to Missouri to Illinois to Salt Lake City is one of the great adventures of the nineteenth century. It is an enthralling journey rich with acts of bravery, frailty, strength, violence, and mendacity, the most hideous being the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
Laurie Winer; The Mormon Candidate; Los Angeles Review of Books; Aug 26, 2012.

See more usage examples of mendacity in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live forever. I no longer do. -Erica Jong, writer (b. 1942)

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