polite fiction

noun

Definitions

  1. A social scenario in which all participants are aware of a truth, but pretend to believe…

    A social scenario in which all participants are aware of a truth, but pretend to believe in some alternative version of events to avoid conflict or embarrassment.

    • Susan is only able to deal with the fact that her husband has sex with the man down the street through a polite fiction. She knows what her husband is really doing when he says he is going "to buy cigarettes".

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for polite fiction. 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