When I was a kid, I asked my mother why people lied. She said, “Usually it’s because if that person tells the truth they won’t get what they want.”
That’s probably more true than not. However, I find it interesting that there are so many words that mean a lie or liar, and most of them are just wonderful sounding. I mean, aren’t we wasting terrific words on something that’s supposed to be shameful and rotten?
For instance, in Tennessee Williams’ play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Big Daddy uses the word ‘mendacity’ frequently. What ham actor wouldn’t want to scream that out to a packed house night after night? Tennessee Williams probably saved the word mendacity from obscurity. In today’s clime, it’s probably the only way anyone under thirty who didn’t major in Drama knows the word at all. If they do. It does have more than two syllables, after all.
Then there’s the wonderful words ‘equivocator’ and ‘fabulist’. Equivocator sounds like someone who settles things, makes this right, equalizes them. And who wouldn’t want to be a fabulist? Maybe not if they knew what it meant, but going by the sheer sound of it, it’s fabulous. Yes, pun intended.
Then there’s prevarication and taradiddle. Just great sounding words. I could go on and on, but as I am simply musing, my job is done here.
But to carry this a little further, maybe there’s reason we have such inventive, colorful, and neat-sounding words for a liar. Possibly somewhere deep inside of each one of us, we are in awe of someone who can look us straight in the face and tell one helluva whopper.

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