butler lie
nounEtymology
Coined in 2009 by Jeff Hancock et al, referring to the idea of a butler blocking access to a home by lying about the occupant's availability.
Definitions
A polite lie told in a text, on the phone, or through a similar electronic medium that…
A polite lie told in a text, on the phone, or through a similar electronic medium that provides an excuse for why one is unavailable.
- By indicating that a contact has read a message, this feature may affect response time expectations and also makes it more difficult to tell a butler lie excusing late reply to a message (eg, “sorry; just saw your message”).
- Thus, if we want to end a mediated communication we may tell a butler lie like 'someone has just knocked at the door', or if we do not want to meet someone at a suggested time we may say we cannot because we 'have an assignment to finish'.
- He's lying, but it's a polite lie. A butler lie.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for butler lie. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA