lying

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of lie.

   She spent the whole flight lying back with her eyes closed.

   Lying flat on the cool tiles was the only way to beat the heat.

   Note

   The participle of resting, and it readily takes a complement: Jane Austen's Elinor, in Sense and Sensibility (1811), avoids lying awake the whole night. The same form carries the verb's prepositional uses, such as a duty lying on someone, an answer lying in the details, or lying with someone in the sexual sense. Its spelling is shared with the participle of untruth, which belongs to a separate verb. Only context tells them apart.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of lie.

   The witness was clearly lying under oath, contradicting himself twice.

   Lying to investors about the company's finances led to criminal charges.

3. 3
   adjective

   Given to telling lies; untruthful and dishonest by nature.

   The novel's lying narrator twists every event to suit himself.

   Voters grew tired of the lying officials who promised reform each year.

   Similardishonest, untruthful, deceitful, mendacious, duplicitous

   Oppositehonest, truthful, sincere

   Note

   Usually not compared, yet it has a lively superlative, lyingest, used for comic insult. Shakespeare gives it twice in the same frame, "the lyingest knave in Christendom," in Henry VI, Part 2 and The Taming of the Shrew. Charlotte Vale Allen's Mixed Emotions (1998) still has "the lyingest woman I've ever met." The form is colloquial and emphatic. In neutral prose, the most dishonest or a habitual liar is safer.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act of telling a lie or falsehood; the habit or practice of telling untruths.

   The investigation uncovered years of lying by senior management.

   For a politician, lying carries risks that can end a career overnight.

   Similardishonesty, deceit, deception, mendacity, fibbing

   Oppositehonesty, truthfulness, candor

   Note

   Falsehood as a habit or as single acts, and the noun can be counted. Jeremy Taylor's Golden Grove sermons of 1653 speak of persuading others "by false propositions, by lyings." William Davies, writing in 2025, uses the mass noun with a possessive: "Trump's lying is no less constant or blatant than in 2016." Pair it with a possessive for someone's ongoing practice. For one particular falsehood, a lie is the usual word.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The act of resting in a horizontal position, or of keeping low to the ground.

   Prolonged lying in one position can cause sores in bedridden patients.

   Their lying motionless among the reeds let the deer wander close.

   Similarreclining, resting

   Oppositestanding

   Note

   A gerund that has become a countable noun, with the plural lyings. The plural shows up in a fixed phrase. Philip Schaff's 1854 translation of Augustine's Expositions on the Book of Psalms asks whom "the lyings in wait of the human heart" could escape. Here lying in wait, keeping low for an ambush, has been turned into a noun. Elsewhere it behaves like any gerund, as in prolonged lying in one position.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5