What would be a good single-word for:
Someone who tells a lie but he doesn't know he's telling a lie.
Someone who, because of his own ignorance, spreads incorrect lies as universal truth.
asked Apr 29, 2013 at 13:55
-
1Pseudo-intellectual.– samuelesqueCommented Apr 29, 2013 at 14:25
-
4Human being. Or person. Or everyone.– RegDwigнtCommented Apr 29, 2013 at 14:37
-
3I think this is more of a philosophical question than anything. Doesn't lying require knowledge that one is telling a non-truth? Would you accuse some one of lying who is lied to but then passes the information on faithfully?– MitchCommented Apr 29, 2013 at 15:44
-
1@PersianCat, there are at least two aspects to the lie: the information content and the frame of mind of the speaker. I agree that the lie conveys incorrect information content. But the interesting part of the question is when the speaker does not know that the information content was incorrect. Perhaps the OP is highlighting the frame of mind of aspect with an "incorrect lie." S/he might be describing a lie where the utterer speaks incorrect information unwittingly, which seems to have less moral problems with knowingly conveying incorrect information in order to deceive.– rajah9Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 16:48
-
1Plato has Socrates distinguish between true opinion (lucky accuracy), false opinion (unlucky inaccuracy), and knowledge (accuracy based on fact and reason). It seems to me that the person described in the original poster's question suffers from false opinion. As I note in a comment to rhetorician's answer below, I think that the adjective "deluded" expresses such a person's mental state.– Sven YargsCommented Apr 29, 2013 at 22:34
|
Show 5 more comments
9 Answers
Single word: mistaken
mistaken adjective
wrong in one’s opinion or judgement:
she wondered whether she’d been mistaken about his intentions
• based on or resulting from a misunderstanding or faulty judgement:
don’t buy a hard bed in the mistaken belief that it is good for you
I don't believe one can be ignorantly dishonest. Such a person as you describe honestly believes what he's saying, but is ignorant of the truth. A less charitable expression than mistaken is speaking from a position of ignorance.
answered Apr 29, 2013 at 14:00
-
2I believe it is not inconceivable that a seared (or dead) conscience can inure a person to lying. Such a person could then be described quite accurately as "ignorantly dishonest." Insanity may also accomplish the same thing, I suspect. Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 15:51
-
-
Refusing to look at facts or reasons but holding a conclusion anyway is ignorant dishonesty. Such a person doesn't know whether the conclusion is right or wrong but pretends to have knowledge.– user32047Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 19:28
-
@rhetorician: As for people inured to lying, I think you're right about that. But when it goes that far, it may be a better question for psychologists than etymologists.– J.R.Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 23:14
How about delusional or deceived?
delusional - adj. form of delusion:
1. a mistaken or misleading opinion, idea, belief, etc ⇒ he has delusions of grandeur
2. a belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary, that is resistant to all reason
self-deception or self-deceit:
the act or an instance of deceiving oneself
Definitions from Collins Dictionary
answered Apr 29, 2013 at 15:51
-
1Delusional would not work here; the speaker is repeating a falsehood unknowingly. Bing defines delusion as "a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of a psychiatric condition." The speaker may have a "persistent false belief," but at the moment of the utterance does not have "strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of a psychiatric condition."– rajah9Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 16:53
-
1Perhaps not "delusional," for the reasons Martha* gives, but I think that "deluded" is quite apt. "Delude" means (according to Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003), "to mislead the mind or judgment of: deceive, trick." A deluded person believes—and may very well say—what is not true as a result of having been misled in mind or judgment. Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 22:26
-
@Jo Bedard and Marthaa: Thanks for the citations and definitions. Do you think the words I've suggested are apt? I'm a little ambivalent myself. On the other hand, my comments above regarding a seared conscience, I feel, are apt and on point. Commented May 1, 2013 at 18:04
-
The op gave two different definitions; for the first one: "Someone who tells a lie but he doesn't know he's telling a lie" delusional or self-deceiving could work, depending on the context.– P. O.Commented May 1, 2013 at 19:04
The word misfeasance is legal terminology. It refers to someone performing incorrectly even though it is legal. (This is broader than lying when you don't know it's a lie.)
(Misfeasance is contrasted with malfeasance, which is known wrongdoing by a public official.)
If the speaker spoke the truth literally, but intended for the listener to misconstrue the statement, then he spoke a prevarication. (If someone asks about your education, and you say, "I went to Harvard," then you are prevaricating if you merely visited the campus and intended the hearer to think that you were educated there.)
Other possibilities:
telling an innocent lie
telling an unwitting lie
being a tale-bearer
I am reading Living Economics: Yeseterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Peter J. Boettke says
The Keynes of The General Theory was never right when it came to an an economy operates, let alone how to fix it when it teeters during crises.
While Boettke does not use a single word to describe this phenomenon, he might name a Keynesian as someone who "spreads incorrect lies as universal truth."
-
1I am quoting the OP here. "Incorrect lie" may be redundant, but perhaps the OP is contrasting with a "baldfaced lie" or a "prevarication."– rajah9Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 16:12
-
Misfeasance is an act, not verbal communication - I don't think it fits the OP's request. Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 17:38
-
Negligence in a legal sense is when you don't do something you should have done (like putting a fence around a swimming pool). This seems quite different from the OP's request which entails "Someone who tells a lie but he doesn't know he's telling a lie." I don't think negligence fits here.– rajah9Commented Nov 22, 2021 at 13:57
A "gossip" is someone who spreads information that may or may not be true, making the gossiper an unwitting liar if the information they're spreading is false.
answered Apr 29, 2013 at 17:43
-
1Gossipmonger is a sometimes useful variant on this term: merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gossipmonger Commented Apr 29, 2013 at 20:11
Unverified/incorrect information could be called misinformation. (The Free Dictionary distinguishes it from disinformation, the intentional spread of false information.) One who spreads misinformation is a misinformer.
at first glance i would have said obvious liar, as someone who tries to lie about a known or obvious truth.
Uninformed is an alternative. There has to be a certain amount of arrogance to inadvertently spread untruths.
An ignoramus - "an ignorant or uneducated person." (Chambers Dictionary)
negligence, irresponsibility, laziness/not doing due diligence, etc.
(Despite what I said here, I'll answer anyway. Cunningham's law and all that.)
The key here I find is the distinction between ignorance and naïveté.
'Someone who, because of his/her own naïveté, spreads incorrect lies as universal truth.' --> honest mistake
'Someone who, because of his/her own ignorance, spreads incorrect lies as universal truth.' --> dishonest mistake
In both cases, no one really has bad intentions. Thus they are mistakes. This is the key difference between dishonest mistake and intentional wrongdoing (eg involuntary manslaughter/humanslaughter vs murder)
But in exactly 1 case, the person should have known better. This is the key difference between dishonest mistake and honest mistake.
Additional: Consider the fool vs the student in the following arabian quote that goes:
“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a student; Teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is Wise; Follow him.”
The fool should have known better. The student was not expected to know better. Something like that.
-
2'Dishonest mistake' has little currency, as strongly suggested by Google ngrams. Suggesting otherwise (even subtly) is disingenuous. Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 11:29
-
@EdwinAshworth if by little currency you mean hardly ever used, then you're absolutely right. i mention more of that in my other post. but really this term was extremely enlightening like it explained so much in my life. kinda like the term 'antifragile' i guess for nassim nicholas taleb aka nero– BCLCCommented Nov 24, 2021 at 11:31
-
@EdwinAshworth but i believe the idea with antifragile is similar: whenever you say fragile, you actually implicitly acknowledge the concept of antifragility. you just didn't have a word for it until nero coined it. similarly, when you say 'honest mistake', you are implicitly (in this case i think it is like on the very border of implicit and explicit) acknowledging the concept of a dishonest mistake. i'm just adding a 'dis-' similar to how nero adds an 'anti-'– BCLCCommented Nov 24, 2021 at 11:35
-
But the mission statement of ELU is to discover, recommend, and explain where possible standard usages. Creative writing, where it cuts across this, belongs elsewhere. Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 12:19