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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I’ve seen both of these used, most recently found examples for both in articles on Wikipedia:
A barefaced (or bald-faced) lie is one that is obviously a lie to those hearing it. The phrase comes from 17th-century British usage referring to those without facial hair as being seen as particularly forthright and outwardly honest, and therefore more likely to get away with telling a significant lie. A variation that has been in use almost as long is bold-faced lie, referring to a lie told with a straight and confident face (hence “bold-faced”), usually with the corresponding tone of voice and emphatic body language of one confidently speaking the truth.[1]
Are we jst going to let them get away with it?!
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I get the feeling that you’ve already discovered this, Huskerduer, but just in case—there’s already a Database article on “bold-faced lie” here: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/82/bold/
Of course, with the hacking of the Database articles, we don’t get to see what the analysis of the substitution looked like.
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Here’s a first person account of the meaning of a bold-face lie:
Bodybuilding forum
why do people say “bald face lie” or some even say “ball face lie”
isnt it “bold face lie” referring to bold face newspaper fonts?
Let’s get beyond baldness, first with a ball face lie:
Wrestling promoter
If he has to stretch the truth, or ball face lie, then that he will do.
Creation science
Evolution is a ball-face lie.
Hurricane lessons we should have learned
hand me the Butane torch and don’t forget the charcoal starter, Don’t work to hard today because I’mall you’rs tonight. Well that was a ball face lie and that’s just how they found him, 47 counties over with balls on his face, ‘hollering, “OH” sugar pie, punkin lips, gatar balls
Balled faced lie:
Protecting Star Trek’s holy texts
That was a complete and utter balled faced lie. No other way to say it.
Foreign Policy discussion
Bin Laden didn’t do s&&t during the Afghan Russian war, that’s a balled faced lie or misconstructure of facts.
Misconstructure. Beauty.
The Other Woman squares off
AS FOR HIM BEING WITH ANY OTHER WOMEN…I ALSO KNOW THAT FOR A BALLED FACED LIE.
Defending Sarah Palin
Palin did not fire the cook, that was proven to be a balled faced lie.
Bull-face lie, with a first person account:
Questions forum
What is bull faced lie?
When someone says ‘bull faced lie’ the mean that lie is very obvious!
Gulf oil spill
I could not believe the spokesman said that it turns out the oil was good for the Oysters, that’s a bull faced lie.
Bowl-face lie, w/ first person account:
Raw food talk
As a child, I was told that I was telling her a “bowl-face lie”. For years I thought the world’s greatest liars had round faces.
History forum
To say that Stalin didn’t systimatically kill other non-Russians in the Soviet Union is a bowl faced lie.
Out-there simbling: a bone-faced lie:
Racing opinions
He’d rather tell a bone faced lie to “secure his manhood” than to truly show some class and say “Sorry, I messed up
Football talk
he took the cheap way out by telling a bone faced lie.
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Nice detective work David. The first-person account you discovered is worthy of it’s own entry in the Database.
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Here’s the example I found tonight:
If I am left out of their early history, they will have to bold face lie about how they got started.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ralphre … ment_reply
A bit unusual to see “lie” as a verb as in that example.
While most or all explanations of the etymology I’ve seen give “bald-faced” (or “bare-faced”) as the acorn, oddly, a look at the n-gram shows “bold-faced” (or “boldfaced”) predating “bald-faced” (or “baldfaced”) by a few years. I don’t know if this means that “bold-faced” is really the acorn, or that the n-gram findings aren’t as representative of actual usage history as we might like to think.
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I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of anything except “bare-faced lie” as being the true brew.
It’d be wonderful to hope that somebody has written “bear-faced lie” with an ursine image in mind. And no punning. How to prove it though?
On the plain in Spain where it mainly rains.
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Yo, David Bird, here are a few more to add to your marvelous list:
Bat-faced lie:
A bat faced lie is followed by a half-truth said in a tone that sounds sarcastic, judgmental, or ironic!
http://theyoke.org/god-goes-native-in-the-garden.html
Bad-faced lie:
You see, the outsourcing charge is a bad-faced lie and the offshore-account charge is nothing more than a smear.
http://www.noliburls.us/view.aspx?id=24338756
It would have been a bad-faced lie to say that she wasn’t moved by his protective behaviour
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8037484/5/ … e-Immortal
Yet another bad faced lie coming from enoughsaid.
http://comments.startribune.com/comment … &start=200
Old-faced lie:
I’ve never heard of anyone in the media saying “Oh I didn’t want to be famous” and it’s not a complete old faced lie.
https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v= … oe4&page=1
Another old faced lie. TheRepublican Party does want to take choice away from women.
http://ohiostate.247sports.com/Board/12 … -9073786/3
Po-faced lie:
The high-cost excuse is a po-faced lie.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Port-sec … .135178103
I know a lot of fans think that this song is full on crap-ola but I wouldn’t mind the music if the lyrics weren’t such a po-faced lie!
http://www.kissfaq.com/forum11/viewtopi … 0&start=40
Perhaps they could invest more, but to say they have not authorised any kind of relevant spend is a po-faced lie.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22bad- … 3Aofficial
Bo-faced lie:
BASICALLY Jasmine Marie Young is a Bo’ Faced LIE and i wouldn’t believe a word dat came outta her bo’ faced lyin mouth…
http://www.blackplanet.com/DemC-cliqueGrlz/
...judging the other comments on this post and knowing the co-directors, I’m sure this is also a bo faced lie.
http://www.urbanbaby.com/topics/32266510
Cold-faced lie:
“What a cold- faced lie !” a self-ordained fugleman bawled from the bottom of the steps.
http://books.google.com/books?id=1GoiAA … 22&f=false
That ladies and gentlemen is a cold faced lie.
http://www.nrpa.com/our-environment/its-not-just-mud/
Gold-faced lie:
He needs to be admitted…. the big told you a gold faced lie and You called him a saint…..
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/catawis … 9CEUC/p416
And most likely if you get through to CS they will tell you a gold faced lie as to where your stuff is in the process of being repaired.
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/eden- … ns-416518/
Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2013-11-28 03:31:19)
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JuanTwoThree wrote:
It’d be wonderful to hope that somebody has written “bear-faced lie” with an ursine image in mind. And no punning. How to prove it though?
Juan, here are a few examples of people’s using “bear-faced lie” in a context which doesn’t appear to suggest punning:
A bear faced lie: – Means a lie directly at another person. Wouldn’t it be fun though if it meant every time we lied our face got all hairy, our ears stuck up and we roared like a bear.
http://kirstywirsty.wordpress.com/2012/ … they-mean/
The typical police/prosecutor technique is to lie to get a conviction and then when asked what is more important to them, getting a conviction or putting the guilty behind bars they lie and choose the latter which is a bear faced lie.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/12 … ratio.html
I told him it was a bear faced lie.
http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/se … 54081.html
We were told – yet again – a complete, blatant, bear-faced lie by Moxey in an attempt to boost ticket sales…AGAIN.
http://www.expressandstar.com/sport/wol … at-wolves/
And Zakmal, you have to take back that bear faced lie about Bambay’s fifty houses!!
http://bintumani.forumchitchat.com/post … ra-5509071
The non-pun use of “bear-faced lie” seems evident. And it’s plausible that an eggcornish meaning connection could be found in a notion of ugliness or savagery in a bear’s face, and this being attributed to a liar’s face. But my incomplete skimming of Google samples gives no unambiguous reason to believe that these folks are imagining a bear when they say “bear-faced lie”, as opposed to just making a spelling error—with the possible exception of the first example above.
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Good additions, Dixon. Bald-faced lie may be one of the most productive acorns in all of English.
Not sure “po-faced” is an eggcorn of “bald-faced.” See Michael Quinion’s discussion: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pof1.htm
On the subject of Quinion—he has a rather good explanation of the antecedents problem behind bald-faced lie: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bal2.htm
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Outstanding, Dixon. I particularly like cold-faced and gold-faced lies, though the latter be perilously close to bold on the keyboard.
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kem wrote:
Not sure “po-faced” is an eggcorn of “bald-faced.” See Michael Quinion’s discussion: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pof1.htm
I am familiar with the term “po-faced”, and acknowledge that the writers in all my examples could have been using it knowingly, but I’m suspicious about its use with “lie”. It just smells eggcornish to me. No way of knowing for sure, but keeping in mind that in some dialects the final consonant sounds in “bold” could be dropped or greatly de-emphasized, resulting, as we have seen, in “bo-faced lie”, it seems like a mighty short hop to “po-faced lie”.
Re: the dropping of final consonant sounds in some dialects—once a black guy was introducing me to his friend, whom he called “Smoo”. I said “Pleased to meet you, Smoo”, only figuring out much later that the guy’s nickname was “Smooth”. It must have sounded funny to those guys to hear me say “Smoo” without their dialectical context, as that pronunciation was inconsistent with my white-boy dialect.
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kem wrote:
Bald-faced lie may be one of the most productive acorns in all of English.
I’d have to agree with you on that, kem! I even found one example of “fold-faced”:
The U.S. media must be severely castigated for waging the country’s first pre-emptive war and enabling the this administration to bring the fold-faced lie to the American people that Hussein had WMDs…
http://www.smartvoter.org/2006/11/07/ca … aper1.html
And there were several of “hold faced”. For instance:
The next person was recently caught in a hold faced lie
http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?to … .3185;wap2
...dom told her that seamus had asked her out a few days ago. what a hold faced lie.
http://z13.invisionfree.com/ALLTHEMAGIC … wtopic=474
There was just one “mold faced”:
So the Obama Adium claim that none of the survivors are subject to such gag borders is another mold faced lie!
https://twitter.com/BreitbartNews/statu … 6554310656
And just one “told faced”:
Which of course is a told faced lie for most of us who have tied one on once or twice.
https://www.facebook.com/91.7TheBounce/ … 7741960165
And, for “blood-faced lie”, we find:
They stipulated that when he opened his mouth on that stand he told a blood-faced lie.
http://il.findacase.com/research/wfrmDo … .IL.htm/qx
blood-faced lie? how do you come up with this shit?
http://www.gamereplays.org/community/in … id=5713178
And here are a few examples of “butt-faced lie”:
...the docs did what they usually do in these situations: held themselves up as Skips only, best and last hope to survive – a butt-faced lie it is difficult to challenge when you are in such a vulnerable state.
http://sickosequel.wordpress.com/catego … -evidence/
Ok, so that was a butt-faced lie, I’m not giving away presents…
http://phrogprince.blogspot.com/2006/03 … seven.html
@kateduff3 why do I feel like that is a complete butt faced lie.
https://twitter.com/CTXSHANK25/status/3 … 9506382848
And if that means I have to lie to my audiences, I will butt-faced lie to them.
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/ … geNumber=4
Butt-faced lie! He has never said such a thing.
http://www.liveleak.com/comment?a=view_ … d=12378707
Janus wrote: that’s a butt-faced lie.
http://conquerorworm.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=15794
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