From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishgive the lie to somethinggive the lie to somethingformalUNTRUE to show that something is untrue This report gives the lie to the company’s claims. → lie
Examples from the Corpus
give the lie to something• The Bomb gives the lie to the false Enlightenment doctrine of perpetual progress.• Does not that hostility to the charter give the lie to the Opposition parties' request for freedom of information?• The success of our manufactured exports gives the lie to the Opposition's portrayal of manufacturing.• The quatrain poems give the lie to that.• They posed for photographers at the star-studded show, giving the lie to rumours they had been separated for several weeks.• Their success gives the lie to predictions of the city's economic doom.• And the way Sir William treated him didn't give the lie to the notion.• A string of female rulers, from Boudicca to Margaret Thatcher, gives the lie to that idea.• Chicken's feet used to give the lie to my bravura claim to Eat Anything, so long as it was recently dead. 