half-truth
Americannoun
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half-truths
plural
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a statement that is only partly true, especially one intended to deceive, evade blame, or the like.
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a statement that fails to divulge the whole truth.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of half-truth
First recorded in 1650–60
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Before he took the time to gather the facts, he painted a negative half-truth about our son and the unfolding case,” she said.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 22, 2023
I think it’s worth exploring at what point a half-truth is more dangerous than a lie.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2022
Just a day after the intelligence officer’s report, the Army offered a clarifying half-truth: It identified the object as a crashed weather balloon.
From Slate ● Jun. 29, 2021
Toobin says that this half-truth and falsehood, respectively, were a rhetorical success because “simplicity rarely loses to complexity in battles in the public square.”
From New York Times ● Aug. 5, 2020
That wasn’t so much a lie as a half-truth.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
No one should be held hostage to other people’s decisions or half-truths.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 19, 2026
People have to also be able to evaluate those words, spotting the half-truths, hyperbole, ambiguities, inaccuracies, and values behind those words — and those skills go back to social studies.
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2025
"The grandiose achievements touted by Holmes and Balwani were half-truths and outright lies," Nguyen wrote in the opinion on behalf of a three-judge panel published on Monday.
From BBC ● Feb. 25, 2025
Technically, I’m sure a product expert could say that some of the product did penetrate into the top layer of wood fibers, but I feel half-truths are whole lies.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 17, 2023
Now I had two angry souls to appease with half-truths.
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
