white lie
"white-lie" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“white lie” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A deliberately untrue statement which is intended to produce a favorable result; especially, one which is judged to be better than an overhonest alternative, as for example to remain polite in a su...
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | white lie |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “white lie” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
white lie is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A deliberately untrue statement which is intended to produce a favorable result; especially, one which is judged to be better than an overhonest alternative, as for example to remain polite in a su...".
Zero misspellings are on record for white lie in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is white lie, spelled W-H-I-T-E- -L-I-E.
Definition
- 1A deliberately untrue statement which is intended to produce a favorable result; especially, one which is judged to be better than an overhonest alternative, as for example to remain polite in a superficial social exchange, or to choose one's battles.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “white lie”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is W-H-I-T-E- -L-I-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.