The trivial definition of “lying” is “telling an untruth.” This definition, however, may be unsatisfactory. The morality associated with “You lied!” does not match the morality of mere falsehood. Instead:

Lying is the action of imparting a claim which the author believes or suspects to be untrue in the hopes that a person believes it.

This definition incorporates the element of intent which is so often implied by the use of the term. But there is a sneakier behavior: duplicity. Some may tell us information which does not meet the foregoing definition of lying still with the intent of making us believe something they do not believe to be true:

Misleading is the action of imparting a claim with the intent or knowledge that a person may come to believe something which the author believes or suspects to be untrue in the hopes that a person believes it.

By this, all lying is misleading, yet not all misleading is lying. Or

$\text{Lying} \subset \text{Misleading}$

The moral evil, a violation of intellectual freedom, is the same in both cases. Yet referring to both of these as “lying” will likely incur semantic arguments.

While these are the things we properly mean by these terms, as explored in Definitions, merely discussing the moral nature of a particular action is more felicitous to discussion—the attempt to establish a definition for deliberation may receive dissent when a direct explanation of the implications of ideas or facts avoids this possibility.

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