lie detector
52
4.4
- noun
- /ˈlaɪ dɪˌtɛktər/
- Specialized
:
detector de mentiras
- The police used a lie detector to determine if he was telling the truth during the investigation.
- a lie detector test
- take a lie detector test
I'm here to do a lie detector test with the Vanity Fair.
- I'm here to do a lie detector test with the Vanity Fair.
- Well, This is why lie detectors don't work.
- Yours looks like the results of a lie detector test.
- The lie detector should make that sound.
- And they're one of the few people in the world that can actually debunk a lie detector test.
- For him, it makes total sense, total sense to say I'll take a lie detector test.
- But if it's a lie detector test, whatever, polygraph, polygraph, we'll we'll say those.
- You hold these metal cans, which are connected by wires to a box called an E meter, which is really like part of a lie detector.
- Like should a prosecution be able to force someone to undergo a functional MRI or any kind of brain scanning lie detector?
- And so I'm convinced they could pass a lie detector test that they believed all that because of course they would.
- If he did that, a liar can pass a lie detector, stuff like that.
- Come on, Addison Ray's lie detector test.
Examples
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Today we're hooking three men and three women up to a lie detector test for round one.
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OK, Dana, you passed the lie detector test.
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Now we're going to ask each other six lie detector test questions.
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Thank you for watching our amazing lie detector test.
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Are you willing to take a lie detector test?
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Do you know how a lie detector works?
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Lucky for us, I brought a lie detector.
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Do you want me to take a lie detector test?
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I want you to take a lie-detector test.
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All I want is a lie detector test, and you refuse to give it to me.
Fiction book (1991)
Synonyms
4
6.1
A machine that records several body signals like heart rate and breathing
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an instrument or system that detects lies' is directly and transparently composed from 'lie' (to utter a falsehood) + 'detector' (a device that detects), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning. This noun-noun compounding is cross-linguistically common and follows basic compositional patterns, making the expression transparent despite varying technologies used to implement such detectors.
Etymology
Lie detector began as a machine that measured body signals like heart rate, breathing, and sweat to see if someone was lying, and the idea was that these changes would show a lie. The word detector simply means something that finds signs, so the name came to mean 'a device to test whether someone is lying'.