the.com/puffery
Legal lying: exaggeration so over-the-top the law assumes nobody's dumb enough to believe it.
means Exaggerated promotional praise or boasting — think 'world's best coffee' — that's puffed up beyond literal truth but not meant to be taken as a factual claim.
from From 'puff,' used since the 1700s for inflated, breathless praise — the same image as puffing air into something to make it look bigger than it is. Puffery entered business and legal vocabulary to describe sellers' hot air: swollen claims so theatrical that the law treats them as harmless bluster rather than deceit.
- legal status
- protected because no reasonable person believes it
- classic example
- best coffee in the world, probably
- the line
- specific false claims cross into fraud
- origin
- from puffing up value, 18th century salesmanship