artifice vs lying

artifice

noun
  • A crafty but underhanded deception. 

  • A trick played out as an ingenious, but artful, ruse. 

  • A strategic maneuver that uses some clever means to avoid detection or capture. 

  • A tactical move to gain advantage. 

verb
  • To construct by means of skill or specialised art 

lying

noun
  • An act of telling a lie or falsehood. 

  • The act of one who lies, or keeps low to the ground. 

adj
  • Tending to tell lies, untruthful, mendacious 

How often have the words artifice and lying occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )