white lie

1. 1.

   an unimportant lie (especially one told to be tactful or polite)

   Broaderlie

Questions about white lie

What does white lie mean?

white lie means "an unimportant lie (especially one told to be tactful or polite)".

Is white lie a common word?

white lie is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.