Watch Your Phraseology Again

A few years back, I wrote about phrases that are wrong. I now have one more to add to the list:

I lied.

At its face value, there is nothing wrong with that statement. I mean, the action it is describing is morally wrong, but the statement is fine.

But people, more and more I’ve noticed, don’t say it when they’ve lied.

They say it when they are merely wrong.

Lying requires an intention to deceive. You think something is A, but you say it is B. If you think something is A and you say it is A, you are not lying. If it really is B, you were just wrong. Please don’t call it lying. That dilutes the wrongness of lying and promotes (or demotes?) it to being a mistake.

You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.

Leviticus 19:11

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This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:34 am and has been carefully placed in the Ponder category.

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