Thread by @AndrewPRLevi

The sister of a colleague is having trouble with the truth, liars, lies, lying & falsehoods. She doesn’t know what they are. She has over a million Twitter followers & a huge media profile.

I worry for my colleague. Her sister. And the UK. I thought I might try to help.

A🧵/1.

The @OED will, I hope, forgive me for the inevitable process of simplification I’m about to apply to their learned entries. But I’ll try to avoid recreating the farrago of nonsense we’ve been seeing on the subject of truth & lying.

Let’s start with the meaning of “true”. /2.

This is quite easy really. For those not easily distracted by inverted pyramids of piffle.

To be true is to conform with reality & fact.

Which brings us to “truth”.

Truth is that which is true. Real. Factual.

Phew. We’re getting somewhere.

Bear with me. /3.

Let’s try our hand at “false” & “falsehood”.

If you were a person who criticises lawyers who get the better of you, but hires them to help you bend the rules, you’d be in heaven, looking for definitional loopholes.

If you had a moral compass you’d see “false” means “untrue”./4.

Getting warmer. “Falsehood”. Milton: “Let truth and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free & open encounter?”

A serious leader or commentator would stand for truth.

Lesser beings would first need to realise a falsehood is an untruthful statement. /5.

How about a “lie”?

Shall we just cut through it all? Perhaps with a smile. Whether or not that’s characterised by a great wordsmith as watermelon-like.

A lie is a statement which is untrue, or intentionally false.

Look carefully. Especially colleagues’ sister. Thanks. /6.

The verb to lie means to tell a lie. Or to make an intentionally false statement.

Pretty easy now. Or perhaps not. If you’re in the habit of describing entirely innocent people as looking like bank robbers. Or part of the postal infrastructure.

Let’s move on. /7.

This is quite exciting. We’re about to find out what a liar is.

We know a liar can’t be present in the House of Commons. The Speaker wouldn’t allow it. And no one’s permitted even to say it.

What a relief.

Because a liar is someone who lies. Tells falsehoods. Is untruthful./8.

Thank you @OED. What would we have done without you?

To recap.

A liar is someone who lies. Or tells falsehoods. Is untruthful.

The question of a liar’s intention isn’t an escape route from the requirement, on decent people, to tell the truth.

I’ll leave it at that. /9.

But not quite.

I said “the sister of a colleague”. That’s no longer true. If a “colleague” is someone working in the same corporation, institution or organisation, the strictly correct statement now is “former colleague”.

I wouldn’t wish to tell a lie. However small. /10. End

(Correction to tweet 6: “colleague’s sister”. Obvs).