Saying is a lie is certainly a bad habit, but do you know that there are different types of lies and English words to describe lies. In this English speaking practice lesson with Michelle, you will learn new English vocabulary to talk about lies and it’s types. Use the words from this English lesson in your conversation to speak fluent English confidently. But, don’t say a lie, avoid it.
Complete Lesson Transcript :-
This is my last lesson. Oops that was just a fib. That was a very small lie through which I was trying to deceive you. Lies, lies and lies and so many lies. We often lie to protect our relationship. Do not hurt other people apparently to sometimes help others but you know, what’s wrong is wrong. In this lesson we are learning the language of lies. What are the different words that you can use to describe lies? So stay with me my name is Michelle and here we go. So the first word that we have “white lie”. We are going to start with some of the very innocent lies which we think are, are said to help other people to protect them and not to make them feel very bad about themselves. So a white lie would be, if my best friend asks me, “hey, do I look fat in that dress”? Of course I don’t want to hurt her I know that she’s looking fat but then she doesn’t have another option to wear right now. So I would just say, “No, no you look fine. That’s okay.” So that’s when you say a white lie and innocent lie to not hurt somebody. To not hurt someone. When I started the lesson I said I’m going to, this is my last video and I’m not going to shoot after this for you. So that was very sad and that was a very small “fib” because it was just a very small lie I didn’t say the truth I just said a small lie just to deceive you. So a fib is a small lie. So I would say a fib is when you go out to watch a movie and everyone really liked the movie and they’re asking you, “did you like the movie?” “How was the movie for you?” and you actually didn’t like the movie too much but you don’t have an option you don’t wanna hurt your friends. Specially the one who took you out for a movie you’d say, no, I would say “I think it was fine movie” “It was a good movie.” So that’s a fib alright so you’re saying a fib when you said that I enjoyed the movie. So the first two in terms of degree are the innocent lies, the soft lies through which you don’t want to hurt other people. Innocent lies. Alright. Now let’s look at this third one that we have, we increase in degree we go from a softer a gentle lie to a more serious lie. Something like deceit. Deceit means to hide something. To hide something from somebody in order for, to gain personal advantage or for your personal advantage, for your self-interest you’re hiding something from someone. So deceit means to hide something from someone, right? So you can be hiding things from other people about yourself you know not sharing complete information about your life just because you’re trying to have some personal advantage. So to hide something for personal advantage. It’s not a very great thing to be deceitful but sometimes we end up being that at interviews. So at those times you tend to say out the things which you think will be preferable so that the employer thinks that you’re the most perfect candidate for the job and you would not see out certain things about you. So if they ask you, you know that what are the great what’s the greatest challenge that you’ve faced? Obviously there are challenges that you face, like you don’t wake up on time and you procrastinate a lot. But you wouldn’t say that so if you’re doing that then you’re being slightly deceitful. Try not to be that, but yeah obviously you cannot say that you’re your procrastinator so it’s alright. The next one that we have is “disingenuous” that’s how we pronounce this word genuine, right? So as it is written the same way it’s pronounced we do not call it disingenuous or this ingenuous we call it disingenuous right. So this word is a more informal way of saying deceitful you can use it every day especially you know when you’re talking to your friends or when you’re telling someone about somebody that he or she was disingenuous which means they hid something from you about their life. So that’s when you can use this it’s a more informal way of saying deceitful, informal. So how do you remember this word? So as you would know the word genuine, genuine is something which is authentic or real right and dis is a prefix that we use to undo this word right it’s the negative. It’s the negative for the word genuine so anything which is not genuine is disingenuous. So you could say that the reporter was being disingenuous when she talked to the journalist sorry oh yeah when she talked to the prime minister the reporter was being disingenuous. Right, so now we look at the next one that we have a “half-truth” or a full truth is there something like that yes there is something called as a full truth obviously we all know what a full truth is but there is something which is a half-truth where you do not share the complete information. So half-truth is not like deceit because deceit is for personal advantage you hide something for personal advantage but in half-truth you just hide because you don’t want to share something. So this is where you’re hiding because you don’t want to share. So Jamie said the half-truths when she said that she likes mark because somewhere deep inside she liked John as well. So she’d never shared the information that she liked John but she only said she likes mark. So that’s half-truth when you do not share the complete information and it’s used in very general conversations it’s not a formal word a very informal word. Right, so now let’s look at the next one that we have and this is “misleading” so now we are increasing in terms of degree these were innocent lies. This is when you’re trying to hide something and this is when you are trying to give the wrong information. You mislead someone when you are trying to give the wrong information. So misleading is something that a robber or murderer might do to a police officer if he’s trying to hide about his movements on the night he murdered someone. So he would mislead the police officer by not telling him the truth and telling him a different story entirely. So he’ll “fabricate a new story” and that’s the next one that you see on the board to fabricate a story means to create a new story or “to spin a tale”. To fabricate a story means to spin a tale. So tale means same as story and fabricate so fabricate the sword comes from the world fabric right this is fabric what we wear and to fabricate something means to make the fabric. So here you’re making up a story or spinning a tale. Tale also means story. So you’re spinning a tale and I’m not the case if you could say consort a tale. Right, so if you’re trying to mislead someone you’ll end up or somebody will end up fabricating a story to give them the wrong information finally we are here at the last three ways of talking about lies and this is to feed someone ally what do we mean my feed someone ally this is when you’re plainly clearly telling a lie to someone you’ve no shame about what you’re saying and what you’re saying is an absolute lie it’s wrong information but you’re giving it out clearly so this is giving out a lie of pure lie or telling a proper light rather right so the next one we have is lying through the tongue when do you lie through the tongue you lie through the tongue when you look into someone’s eyes and you tell them the lie right there on their face this is a very serious matter you shouldn’t be doing it nobody should be doing it actually so this is possibly we would lie through the tongue when we get late for work sometimes and we have a scared and panicked just say the truth that why we were late so we just say that okay I lied through my tongue by saying that I was caught up in the traffic jam but the truth was that you woke up late so what you’re doing is that you’re like through the tongue you’re looking into someone’s eyes and telling them a lie this is looking into eyes looking into their eyes and saying a lie the last one that we have is a pack of lies so as you could have guessed it the word pack means a lot of lies together when you’re not just saying one lie there dozens of lies one after the other a person will only say lies and say no truth at all sometimes more formally you could also say a tissue of lies or tissues of lie lies so tissues of lies would be a lot of lies packed together in something that you’re telling someone you’re telling an entirely different story when the story or the reality is something very different so these are the words and the Indians and the phrases that you can use to talk about lies and not to lie yourself you can talk about lies using this I hope it was fun for you to learn this please come back for more lessons with me.