Economical with the truth

To be economical with the truth literally means to avoid revealing too much of the truth. While the idea may have an approbatory sense of prudence or diplomacy, the phrase is often either used euphemistically to denote dissimulation (misleading by withholding pertinent information) or else used ironically to mean outright lying.

The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations and Kenneth Rose trace the idea to Edmund Burke, the first of whose Letters on a Regicide Peace, written in 1795 and published in 1796, included:

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer.

The religious sense of "economy" was applied to religious truth by John Henry Newman, based on Jesus' injunction not to cast pearls before swine. Newman advocated "cautious dispensation of the truth, after the manner of a discreet and vigilant steward" while being "careful ever to maintain substantial truth".Mental reservation is a somewhat related idea also associated with Roman Catholic ethics.

A jocular reference to the basic concept was made by Mark Twain in Following the Equator in 1897:

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economise it.

The precise phrase "economical with the truth" is attested from 1897. It was used in the New Zealand House of Representatives in 1923, and the Canadian House of Commons in 1926; "over-economical with the truth" was used in the British House of Commons in 1968. Alan Durant of Middlesex University describes the phrase prior to 1986 as having "extremely restricted currency" and as a rule used in allusion to either Burke or Twain.

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