butler lie

English

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.

Noun

butler lie (plural butler lies)

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.
   • 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:

     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”).

   • 2016, Owen Hargie, Skilled Interpersonal Communication, page 245:

     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'.

   • 2017, Cassandra Parkin, The Winter's Child:

     He's lying, but it's a polite lie. A butler lie.

Anagrams

• bulletrie, rubellite