Dictionary

butler lie en · NOUN

Etymology

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.

Meanings

1. 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.
   • He's lying, but it's a polite lie. A butler lie. 2017, Cassandra Parkin, The Winter's Child:
   • 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'. 2016, Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Communication, page 245:
   • 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”). 2011 March, Lindsay Reynolds, Samantha Gillette, Jason Marder, Zachary Miles, Pavel Vodenski, Ariella Weintraub, Jeremy P Birnholtz, Jeffrey T Hancock, “Contact stratification and deception: blackberry messenger versus SMS use among students”, in Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work:

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