Definition of "belie" []

• To give a false representation to; misrepresent: "He spoke roughly in order to belie his air of gentility” ( James Joyce). (verb-transitive)
• To show to be false; contradict: Their laughter belied their outward grief. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But these terms belie the simplicity of what really happened."
• "Yea, and as for us, beloved pair of pious Emperors, shining forth from the purple, connected with the dearest names of father and son, and not allowing the name to belie the relationship, but striving to set in all other aspects also an example of superhuman love, whose preoccupation is Orthodoxy rather than pride in the imperial diadem,—it is in these things that the deed which is before our eyes instigates us to take pride."
• "Spectacular shots which kind of belie the danger which is involved here."