Playing loose and pulling wool

I find it interesting that there seem to be more words for telling a lie or stretching the truth than for telling the truth. My dictionary has an entire paragraph of synonyms for the word lie, but only three for truth, and they are all derived from the latin word verus, which means true.



So, if you're going to tell a fib (which comes from the 16th or 17th century slang phrase fible-fable, with emphasis on the fable) and don't want to admit it, you can dissemble, dissimulate, equivocate, fabricate, obfuscate or prevaricate. What difference would it make? Is one fib worse than the other? Is one the good word for "little white lie"?



There are different ways to hide the truth. You can hide your emotions (dissimulation) or hide who you are (Sherlock Holmes was known for his being able to dissemble). Hiding the truth in similar-sounding words (Korea was a police action rather than a war) is equivocation. If you feel like you're turning away from something to avoid telling the truth, think of prevaricating, and if you need to make something up to avoid the truth, fabricate it.



So there are shades of differences to the words, just like there are with truth.



Prevaricate comes from a Latin word praevaricatus, the past participle of praevaricari, which means to walk crookedly. Pre-, as is usually does, means before. But varicari means to straddle. It comes from varus, which means bent, and if you want to go back to the Indo-European root for the Latin word and take another path you would end up with the word vacillare, from which we get the word vacillate. No matter how you look at it, prevaricate is an unsteady version of the truth.



Obfuscate comes from the Latin obfuscatus, the past participle of obfuscare, which means toward darkness. Ob- is a Latin prefix meaning toward, and fuscare means to obscure, from the word fuscus which means dark. So to try and hide the truth from the light, you are obfuscating. Perhaps pulling the wool over ones' eyes is a way of obfuscating.



Equivocating is using words to sound like the truth while actually deceiving. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" sounds like a truthful statement until you unravel the speaker's meaning for "sexual relations" and what that excludes. The Latin words aequus and vox mean equal and voice, and are the original source for this word for a means of evading the truth. aequus vox, after going through Low Latin and getting to Middle Latin, developed a past participle (interesting that we seem to get our "lie" words from past participles) of aequivocari that is aequivocatus. The Middle English dropped the us and added an en, and dropped the a. (Aesop, speaking of fables, seems to be one of the few to have retained the ae in common usage.)



Dissimulate is not the same as dissimilate, which means to make dissimilar (not similar). Dissimulate comes from the word from which we get simulation, or representation of the actual. It means to hide by pretense, or to act in a way that isn't true. Usually you hide your feelings or your motives when you dissimulate, so you are simulating the way you think you should act. The murderer who shows excessive grief is likely dissimulating to avoid suspicion. What's interesting is that the second definition of dissimulate is dissemble, though I find a significant difference between the two



Where dissimulating is showing the wrong attitude or emotion to avoid the truth, dissembling is more overt in that its primary definition relates to physical appearance, disguising the truth or concealing under a false appearance. It also comes from the word simulate, but to dissemble means to try to mis-represent the actual through physical appearance. Used most often of someone trying to hide their identity (Khalid Sheik Mohommed comes to mind, if you've seen the robed and bearded photo and the one shortly after his capture with bare head and no beard) it is more about hiding physically than emotionally or intellectually.



Just like there's more than one manner of excoriating a feline (see Feb. 3 blog), there is more than one way to shade the truth. And more words about it (the next blog on this subject with focus on words ending in -y rather than -ate).