The Word of 2022 is “Belie”, Don’t Think So? We’ll Make you a Belie-ver

Here at the BBC, we’re pretty much life coaches. Helping you to read more, eat better, exercise more and of course articulate better. We’re back with more helpful tips, this time we’re talking about a word that is hot on the streets, the word “Belie“.

The definition is actually pretty easy to remember since disguising, concealing or misrepresenting is basically ‘to be a lie’, now take out the ‘a’ and you got ‘belie’. You’re welcome, they don’t just hand out sub-600 SAT English scores for nothing.

It’s a word I keep seeing pop up whether it be in a book, literary journal, or organic chemistry textbook (all things I read daily of course). If you want to be with the in-crowd, we recommend adopting the word now and dropping it in everyday use. A few words of caution though:

Because I am so smart, I definitely did not think ‘belie’ was the British version of the word “belly” the first 10x I came across it. It would, however, be completely rational for someone to think the same people that spell color as ‘colour’ and think cookies are ‘biscuits’ would also change belly to belie, but I definitely didn’t think that. You also may become confused when hearing the word out loud and think it’s a British person talking about rock climbing. And you may want to go on a long rant about how sick the rock climbing seen from Mission Impossible 2 was, but belie and belay are in fact two different words.

(This scene is sick though):

Need some ways to casually drop ‘belie’ in everyday conversation to make you look hip/intelligent, we got you covered:

I’ll tell you what, the hosts of the Buddy Book Club podcast are so attractive and masculine, it belies their supreme intelligence level.

It may look like I have a protruding belly, but this belly belies my six pack underneath. Also, ‘belly’ and ‘belie’ are pronounced differently, you probably didn’t know that.

Even famous author Tommy Clancy and Ralphy Waldo Emerson were on the belie train early: