Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Dictionary Project, is mendacity. Mendacity is a noun which means “the quality of being mendacious; untruthfulness; tendency to lie” or “an instance of lying; falsehood” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mendacity). We have here another one of those circular definitions, so what does mendacious mean? It’s an adjective that means “telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful” when referring to a person or “false or untrue” when referring to a thing, like a report or a story.

Mendacity appears in English in the “1640s, from French mendacité and directly from Late Latin mendacitas ‘falsehood, mendacity,’ from Latin mendax ‘lying; a liar’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=mendacity). Mendacious entered English in the “1610s, from French mendacieux and directly from Latin mendacium ‘a lie, untruth, falsehood, fiction,’ from mendax (genitive mendacis) ‘lying, deceitful,’ from menda ‘fault, defect, carelessness in writing,’ from PIE root *mend- ‘physical defect, fault’ (see amend (v.)). The sense evolution of Latin mendax was influenced by mentiri ‘to speak falsely, lie, deceive’” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/mendacious).

The first time I came across the word mendacity was when I was in college. I majored in Dramatic Literature and Theater, and in at least one of my classes we read/watched Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for 1955. It’s about a family on the Mississippi delta:

The event in the play is the birthday of the family patriarch, “Big Daddy” Pollitt. He and Big Mama begin the play in a celebratory mood since Big Daddy has just received a clean bill of health, they think, from a medical clinic. However, the truth is that Big Daddy is dying of cancer. The couple have two boys, Brick and Gooper, and they are each married, Brick to Maggie and Gooper to Mae. Gooper and Mae have children, but Brick and Maggie do not, and they haven’t slept together in a long time.

The trouble between Brick and Maggie relates to Brick’s best friend, Skipper, who committed suicide. Skipper was attracted to Brick, but before he died, he tried to seduce Maggie to prove that he was not gay. However, he was unable to go through with it. Another source of trouble in the family is the aggressive way in which Gooper and Mae are trying to secure a larger share of Big Daddy’s estate. Maggie is trying to frustrate their efforts, but Brick obviously couldn’t care less even though he is the favorite son.

I won’t go into any more details in case you decide to read or see the play. It was, apparently, Williams’s favorite of his plays. Personally, I prefer The Glass Menagerie. But what connects it to the word of the day is that mendacity appears in it a number of times.

In Act 2, Brick says, “Have you ever heard the word ‘mendacity’?
BIG DADDY: Sure. Mendacity is one of them five-dollar words that cheap politicians throw back and forth at each other.
BRICK: You know what it means?
BIG DADDY: Don’t it mean lying and liars?
BRICK: Yes, sir, lying and liars.
BIG DADDY: Has someone been lying to you?

There have been two movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1958, Richard Brooks directed it with Paul Newman as Brick, Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie, and Burl Ives as Big Daddy. Even though I haven’t seen that movie in years, I can still hear Burl Ives saying, “What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it, Brick? Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?” This 1958 production was MGM’s third highest grossing movie of the year as well as being a critical success.

The second was a 1984 made-for-TV movie starring Jessica Lange, Tommie Lee Jones, and Rip Torn as Big Daddy, directed by Jack Hofsiss. This version was based on a 1974 revival that included some revisions by the playwright. If you have never seen it, watching either version would be worthwhile. And that’s no lie.

Today’s image is from The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2020/8/4/almost-there-burl-ives-in-cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof.html). It’s of Burl Ives as Big Daddy in the 1958 movie version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a role that got Ives an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.