Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lying; untruthful: a mendacious child.
- adj. False; untrue: a mendacious statement. See Synonyms at dishonest.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Given to lying; speaking falsely; falsifying.
- Having the character of a lie; false; untrue: as, a mendacious report; mendacious legends.
Wiktionary
- adj. of a person lying, untruthful or dishonest
- adj. of a statement, etc. false or untrue
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Given to deception or falsehood; lying.
- adj. False; counterfeit; containing falsehood.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. intentionally untrue
- adj. given to lying
Etymologies
- From Middle French mendacieux, from Latin mendācium ("lie, untruth"), from mendāx ("lying"). (Wiktionary)
- From Latin mendācium, lie, from mendāx, mendāc-, mendacious. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed.”
“The suggestion that 40 million people died because of the power of words might seem trite until one recalls the mendacious blabberings of the leaders of a war we are still fighting.”
The Book Thief: Summary and book reviews of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
“Perhaps the term 'mendacious' could be added to Romanus's list.”
“The first hour of the hearing was dominated by Department of Public Health head Mitchell Katz's "mendacious" set of statistics, followed by the uber-flack Sam Singer saying that everything was okay.”
“And here he exposes himself as just the kind of mendacious, chicaning, empty bag of wind he has always appeared to be.”
“During six months spent by the "mendacious" Pinto on the island, the imitative people made no fewer than six hundred match-locks or arquebuses.”
The Religions of Japan From the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji
“By the way - though I imagine you were merely trying to denigrate others and be oh so cute - the word is "mendacious" … not "mendoucheous", which isn't even phonetically correct.”
“Stepahnie, what you write has value, but it glosses over the fact that there are millions, yes, millions, of your fellow citizens who HAVE behaved in a very prudent risk averse manner, and they are going to get hammered along with everyone else, and policies which exacerbate the exposure the risk averse to hammering caused by the behavior of the imprudent/mendacious discourages prudent risk averse behavior in the future.”
“You end up with the mendacious garbled into incoherence.”
Matthew Yglesias » Steve Austria (R-OH) Doesn’t Know When the Depression Happened
“Brooks is a mendacious, lying, pimp-shit of the “have-more” class, which exemplifies the very attitude of entitlement it exploits for profit by attributing it to the “have-nots””
Think Progress » New York Times urged to issue correction for David Brooks’ column.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mendacious’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 269 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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GRE
droll, dyspeptic, ebullient, ardor, edify, efficacy, malinger, mannered, martinet, maudlin, mendacious, mendicant and 101 more...
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Cool Words
Words I'd like to see enter common usage.
fricatrice, inchoate, imparlance, apothegm, ductile, parley, frisson, quiescent, redolent, insouciance, feckless, caviling and 25 more...
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To Be or Not To Be
Words to live by (or not)
prescient, polyglot, fatuous, phlegmatic, mendacious, pithy, philistine, perspicacious, epicure, ebullient, probity, profligate and 9 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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M
letters starting with m
mitigate, maudlin, magnanimity, magnanimity, malleable, maverick, maverick, mendacious, metamorphosis, meticulous, misanthrope, mollify and 2 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
anacoluthon, defenestration, hypnopomp, hypnagogue, idioglossia, panopticon, tatterdemalion, abalone, caltrop, miasma, paroxysm, smalt and 475 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for mendacious.

Louises Loved this word ever since Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof said mendacity with such deliciousness! Sep 6, 2012
jrome Bernstein said:
"In the case George W. Bush, the American system has obviously failed -- tragically -- about which we can talk more in a minute. But imagine the difference in our worldview today, had the institutions -- particularly of government -- done their job to insure that a mendacious and dangerous president (as has since been proven many times over, beyond mere assertion) be restrained in a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers, brought turmoil to the lives of millions, and constrained the goodwill towards the United States in much of the world."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/01/23/DI2007012301482.html?sub=new Jan 25, 2007