Falsehood

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Falsehood \False"hood\, n. [False + -hood]
     1. Want of truth or accuracy; an untrue assertion or
        representation; error; misrepresentation; falsity.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Though it be a lie in the clock, it is but a


              falsehood in the hand of the dial when pointing at a
              wrong hour, if rightly following the direction of
              the wheel which moveth it.            --Fuller.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A deliberate intentional assertion of what is known to be
        untrue; a departure from moral integrity; a lie.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Treachery; deceit; perfidy; unfaithfulness.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Betrayed by falsehood of his guard.   --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     4. A counterfeit; a false appearance; an imposture.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              For his molten image is falsehood.    --Jer. x. 14.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              No falsehood can endure
              Touch of celestial temper.            --Milton.
  
     Syn: Falsity; lie; untruth; fiction; fabrication. See
          {Falsity}.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  falsehood
       n 1: a false statement [syn: {falsity}, {untruth}, {false
            statement}] [ant: {truth}]
       2: the act of rendering something false as by fraudulent
          changes (of documents or measures etc.) or counterfeiting
          [syn: {falsification}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  60 Moby Thesaurus words for "falsehood":
     blague, canard, cock-and-bull story, credibility gap, deceit,
     dishonesty, dissimulation, distortion, erroneousness, error,
     exaggeration, fabrication, fairy tale, fakery, fallaciousness,
     fallacy, falseness, falsity, farfetched story, farrago, feigning,
     fib, fibbery, fibbing, fiction, fish story, flam, flimflam, fraud,
     ghost story, half-truth, inveracity, legal fiction, lie,
     little white lie, lying, mendaciousness, mendacity,
     misrepresentation, misstatement, mythomania, pious fiction,
     pretense, prevarication, pseudology, sham, slight stretching,
     story, tale, tall story, tall tale, taradiddle, trumped-up story,
     truthlessness, untrueness, untruth, untruthfulness,
     unveraciousness, white lie, yarn
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  FALSEHOOD. A willful act or declaration contrary to truth. It is committed 
  either by the willful act of the party, or by dissimulation, or by words. It 
  is willful, for example, when the owner of a thing sells it twice, by 
  different contracts to different individuals, unknown to them; for in this 
  the seller must willfully declare the thing is his own, when he knows that it
  
  is not so. It is committed by dissimulation when a creditor, having an 
  understanding with his former debtor, sells the land of the latter, although 
  he has been paid the debt which was due to him. 
       2. Falsehood by word is committed when a witness swears to what he 
  knows not to be true. Falsehood is usually attendant on crime. Roscoe, Cr. 
  Ev. 362. 
       3. A slander must be false to entitle the plaintiff to recover damages. 
  But whether a libel be true or false the writer or publisher may be indicted 
  for it. Bul N. P. 9; Selw. N. P. 1047, note 6; 5 Co. 125; Hawk. B. 1, c. 
  73, s. 6. Vide Dig. 48, 10, 31; Id. 22, 6, 2; Code, 9, 22, 20. 
       4. It is a general rule, that if a witness testifies falsely as to any 
  one material fact, the whole of his testimony must be rejected but still the 
  jury may consider whether the wrong statement be of such character, as to 
  entitle the witness to be believed in other respects. 5 Shepl. R. 267. See 
  Lie.