untruism

plural untruisms

1. Something that is not true; a false statement.

   Aristotle's implicit totalitarianism rests ultimately on a questionable inference from a metaphysical untruism.

   2005, Richard Kraut, Steven Skultety, Aristotle's Politics, page 201

   3 more examples

   No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips.

   1878, Anthony Trollope, The warden and Barchester Towers: Volume 1, page 262

   Parmenides' philosophy rests, if I am right, on an untruism; it is some slight consolation that his was by no means the last system to be built on such a sandy foundation.

   1982, Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, page 132

   This fickle oscillation is often precipitated by the chameleon-like quality of 'untruisms': 'An untruism is an ambiguous sentence

   1993, Roy Sorenson, Pseudo-Problems, page 118

   Synonyms: falsehood