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Can someone tell me the definition of a person who invents lies, and then believes them to be fact. Inspite of evidence to the contrary? Is there a medical term for this mental disorder?
Love this web site.
Wendy J

Let me make sure I understand what you're saying. A lie is different than a falsehood. A lie is a KIND of falsehood. A falsehood is only a lie, if the person communicating it knows that it's false.

Oddly, I have known people who, because they think something up, that it must be true. They're not aware that they're just making stuff up. It was a rude awakening for me. These people are delusional.

But to make up a fact and consciously recognize that you are making it up, that while you are making it up you are aware that it is contrived and then later to forget that ever fabricated it, like in 1984. This is a very odd thing. A politician? An O'Brien?

Don't some pathological liers wind up believing their own lies? Or not being able to remember what was a lie and what was a truth?

thanks for the great feed back. It's strange because I know a person who practise such behaviour to the point of being quite slanderious toward people. The scary thing is she ends up believing her own lies. Go figure!!!!

Sounds positively scandalacious. In psychology and medicine, the term confabulation is used to describe the process of inventing fabrications that one believes to be true. Several dictionaries mention "...to fill gaps in one's memory.". One medical example is a test for confabulation in which a physician holds his hands with his fingers and thumbs pinched together as if he were holding a string. He then asks the subject, what color is the string? One who is confabulating might name a color rather than simply say that there is no string.

Interesting sort of mental disorder. What if you don't want to disappoint the physician with his pantomime show and choose a color even though you're positively aware that there is no string?
I hope there are more tests to find out the true 'confabulator', for this one does not seem totally waterproof.

Well, sure, one swallow does not make a summer you know. This is but one little test. A doctor might also ask a patient which of the Spice Girls has the most talent, for example.

Aye! That would be a tough one.

A doctor might also ask a patient which of the Spice Girls has the most talent, for example. Dang--had to wipe down my keyboard after that one!

That is cute. I like it!

That is cute. I like it!

IIRC, an old Greek said something similar.

Mr Angelopoulous, the owner of the butcher shop up our street?

Mr Angelopoulous

Funny, I thought it was Mr Aristotle of Stageira in that funny greengrocer's pamphlet of his yclept Nicomachean Ethics. But, I think you're right. Mr Aristotle said "one swallow does not a Spring make". My bad. BTW, this is the same shmate in which the word επιχαιρεκακια (epikhairekakia) 'schadenfreude' first saw the light o' day.

Probably get confused in English during that period when Lent had been taken over by the religious season and spring had not yet become the replacement word. We used summer to refer to both spring and summer.

Maybe because, unlike in the Mediterranian regions, spring and summer of the temparate climat are not that clearly distinguishable? From around May we could call the season summer.
Eén zwaluw maakt nog geen zomer. Identical to the English expression.

(meaning in summer there may be still be spring's temp. and in spring summer's, while in Greece the summers are blazing hot.)

(Classical) Greek has words for spring, εαρ (ear < PIE *wes-r- 'spring, cf. Latin ver, Sanskrit vasanta, Old Irish errach 'spring', Old English had lencten whence Lent < PIE *del- 'long', also English long, per Faldonem supra), and summer θερος (theros).

You are giving away some beautiful quotes these days!
Sad nightingale though.

Faldo, Faldonis? 3rd declension?

Faldo, Faldonis? 3rd declension?

Yes, that's how I felt it. Kind of like Plato, Platonis. If I have erred, PM me, and we can work out your declensional niceties.

Works for me. I never thought about it before. I will PM you my real Latin name and we can work some kinks out of that one.

I think the question would be; Do any of the Spice Girls have any talent?

Confabulate sounds like a accurate diagnostic of the condition, as does pathological. So then I could sum it up by saying she is a 'Pathological Confabulator.' Wow, messy mind!