What would be the opposite of the phrase "Truer words were never spoken" ?
"I am truly grateful", said Alfred. "Untruer words were never spoken", snided Shelly.
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[That's] the blackest lie [in history] is perfectly clear, has been used, is what I'd use, but registers too few hits in a Google search for me to post it as an 'answer'.– Edwin AshworthCommented May 6, 2020 at 11:42
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4 Answers
…has the advantages of clarity and brevity.
Although if a phrase is required
What a load of old bollocks!
is vernacular usage.
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or "horse-shit!" / "What a load of horse-shit!", if you're American, Commented May 6, 2020 at 21:59
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1No, but it's not uncommon to see the south ends of horses headed north. :-) Commented May 7, 2020 at 1:38
"A bigger lie has never been told/spoken" is at least moderately common. I find 6 instances in Google Books and dozens with regular Google.
answered May 6, 2020 at 21:55
An answer along the same line of thinking as David's answer, but more relevant in American English would be to say "Horse-Shit" or "Bull-Shit". It's used in much the same way that British English uses "bollocks" in that you would say "What a load of Horse-Shit!" or "What a load of Bull-Shit!"
In implementation, it is important to note though that Americans say "shit" in a lot of different contexts. "This is some good shit", "She's got her shit together", "I'm tired of your shit", "I feel like shit", "She's a piece of shit", "She lost her shit with a coworker", "This has turned into a shit show", and "The dog shit on the carpet" all have distinctly different meanings. Shit is so ubiquitous that you can just drop it in a sentence wherever you want and it probably has a relevant meaning. So, it is important to specify "bull" or "horse" when talking about untrue things to avoid confusion.
The exception would be if a person speaks a lot of horse shit, you would say they are "full of shit" in which case you do not need to specify the droppings as those of one of the aforementioned ungulates to know you are talking about falsehoods.
If you want the actual opposite of your sentence, perhaps this would work:
Falser non-words will always be non-spoken.
Your example becomes:
"I am truly grateful", said Alfred. "Falser non-words will always be non-spoken.", snided Shelly.
Fits perfectly with snided, right? Shelly is one clever individual. :-)
Update: As per @Nossjimiki's comment, one might use unspoken in place of non-spoken, in which case the OP's example becomes:
"I am truly grateful", said Alfred. "Falser non-words will always be unspoken.", snided Shelly.
Works fine.
answered May 7, 2020 at 1:44
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@Nosajimiki Thanks. According to M-W, unspoken means "not spoken : expressed or understood without being directly stated," e.g., an unspoken agreement/assumption, an unspoken rule. So in one sense unspoken still implies expressed, which I was trying to avoid. Still, unspoken could simply mean not spoken, so I've added it as a possibility. Commented May 7, 2020 at 13:44
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Re downvote: Someone has zero or maybe even a negative sense of humor. :-) I answered the question exactly as posed. Commented May 7, 2020 at 16:44
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I did not downvote (only because it made me laugh), but the OP asked for "the opposite of the phrase" meaning they want a word or phrase that has the opposite meaning of those words when treated as a singular idea. Because non-words are unspoken, and the target of your remark has spoken, you are acknowledging that "falser" does not apply here one way or the other; so, it's not really the opposite. Commented May 7, 2020 at 18:33
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@Nosajimiki I'm glad I made you laugh. I LOLed myself. :-) I was simply trying to craft the opposite of Truer words were never spoken, not seeking logical consistency.That said, one might argue that (1) at least some non-words can be spoken, e.g., it's not hard to "say" garpaptic, and (2) a bigger problem concerns the characterization of given string of non-words as truer or falser than other possible strings of non-words. Commented May 9, 2020 at 14:12