Translations 456, English Insights: idiom “big lie” definition, origin, usage from 1925 to 2024, translations to Spanish, Portuguese
Michael D. Powers, Ph.D., USCCI
US Certified Court Interpreter 1980 / Ph.D. Spanish Portuguese 1981 / 24 years university professor / Estimates: 12,000+ depositions, hearings, etc. / 850 trials / 3000 documents / Conference Interpreter 650 conferences
Translations 456, English Insights: idiom “big lie” definition, origin, usage from 1925 through 2024, translations to Spanish, Portuguese
big lie
The most common meaning of this phrase is a technique for gross distortion or misrepresentation of political propaganda first used by Adolf Hitler against the Jews and much more recently by Donald Trump regarding the presidential election he lost in 2020.
Hence, its origin was in 1025 in the book Hitler wrote entitled “Mein Kampf” and in German is the “große Lüge.“
See the following taken from Wikipedia:
“A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique.[1][2] The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic.
According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the idea of the original big lie to turn sentiment against Jews and justify the Holocaust. Herf maintains that Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party actually used the big lie technique that they described – and that they used it to turn long-standing antisemitism in Europe into mass murder. Herf further argues that the Nazis' big lie was their depiction of Germany as an innocent, besieged nation striking back at "international Jewry", which the Nazis blamed for starting World War I. Nazi propaganda repeatedly claimed that Jews held outsized and secret power in Britain, Russia, and the United States. It further spread claims that the Jews had begun a war of extermination against Germany, and used these to assert that Germany had a right to annihilate the Jews in self-defense.
In the 21st century, the term has been applied to attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election by Donald Trump and his allies, specifically the false claim that the election was stolen through massive voter and electoral fraud. The scale of the claims resulted in Trump supporters attacking the United States Capitol.[3][4] Later reports indicate that Trump knew he had lost the election while promoting the narrative.[5][6][7][8]
Scholars say that constant repetition across many different forms of media is necessary for the success of the big lie technique, as is a psychological motivation for the public to believe the extreme assertions.”
Translations of “big lie”
Spanish
gran mentira [big lie] big lie
grotesca mentira [grotesque lie] big lie
tremenda mentira [tremendous lie] big lie
camama [cock and bull story, fairy tale, fabrication, fib, hoax] big lie
camándula [hoodwinking, hoax] big lie
metráfula [
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(colloquial) mayana
mentira política importante [important political lie] big lie
patraña [bunk, big act] big lie
(Spain) fraude [fraud]
publicidad engañosa [deceptive advertising]
(Argentina) gran engaño [big deceipt]
Portuguese
a grande mentira [the big lie]
mentira grande [big lie]
fraude [fraud]
engano [deceipt, deception]
propaganda enganosa [deceptive advertising
Sources
Magic English Spanish app
WordPerfect English Spanish app
English Portuguese Best Dictionary app
WordRefefrence English Portuguese app