self-lie
English
Etymology
From self- + lie.
Noun
self-lie (plural self-lies)
- (rare) a lie told to oneself
- 1910, Alan Durward Mickle, The Great Longing: A Book for Vain People, page 161:
- And there comes even to the thinker an hour when he believes at last, that never will he be a social star nor great in anything but his thoughts, and he becomes resigned, which means convinced of the truth of the self-lie that all the lonely days he has been telling.
- 1998, Judy Simons, Kate Fullbrook, Writing, a woman's business, page 139:
- At the same time I want to hold on to the fact that each modality of the self-lie also performs the presence, albeit as an obscene underside, of a traumatic truth.
- 2019 May 22, Rachel Shenhav-Goldberg, “By going vegan, Israelis can avoid talking about human rights”, in +972 Magazine:
- When people are exposed to information they cannot cope with, they steer away from that information. This state of denial may be an unintentional self-lie. It is a state of knowing and simultaneously not knowing.
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Anagrams
- fellies