white lie

noun

: a lie about a small or unimportant matter that someone tells to avoid hurting another person
He told a (little) white lie as his excuse for missing the party.

Examples of white lie in a Sentence

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Exhausted and distraught at his mother’s distress, one day Jan tells her a white lie: His father is on a trip to Paris, where his parents spent their honeymoon in 1970. — John Hopewell, Variety, 30 Dec. 2024 Every slit throat and breathless headline whispers the same thing into a thousand different ears: Everything you were told about the world as a kid was a little white lie. — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 8 July 2024

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“White lie.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20lie. Accessed 21 Mar. 2025.

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