Ananias Dead An Uh Ny Uhs Noun Liar Wife Sapphira Struck

Ananias /an-uh-NY-uhs/

noun

A liar.

[After Ananias, who along with his wife Sapphira, was struck dead for lying. They sold a piece of land. Instead of giving away all of the proceeds from the sale, they kept a portion for themselves, to the displeasure of Peter. Earliest documented use: 1876.]

"Their 'exaggerations' and 'inventions' were roundly condemned. The worst offender was the Ananias whose dispatches to the New York World from Fort Keogh told of dead cattle, sixty-below temperatures, snow eight to fifty feet deep and the like." - Helena Huntington Smith; The War on Powder River; University of Nebraska Press; 1966.