03-23-2008, 05:03 PM
To me, lying is deliberately telling an untruth. There are varying degrees of lies though. The most common sort of lie has little gravity and is simply telling an extremely small untruth, e.g. telling someone you're fine when you're really not or saying that you don't mind when you really do. Above these sort of lies in gravity are lies that are large untruths, but still relatively harmless, e.g. telling your children about Santa Claus or the Easter bunny or saying that you can't pick up your friend at the airport when you really can. Finally, there are large untruths that are made to deliberately made to deceive in order to harm someone or reap personal gain, e.g. falsifying accounting statements.