middle truth 

A statement or affirmation whereby certain related factual content is manipulated and used to support a fallacious position. An example may be a situation in which someone receives a fair use ruling around the rights to intellectual property, and then uses that permission to then produce merchandise based on the IP, whilst informing customers that he has procured the rights to the IP.

Comparison to "half truth" -
At first glance, middle truth may seem a direct replacement for its related term, half truth. Popular usage, however, seems to indicate a preference for middle truth when using the term to defend past actions. The term half truth implies that the statement is half truth and half "something else", perhaps untruth, whereas middle truth seeks to position the argument on a spectrum made up entirely of truth, but of varying degrees. Therefore a middle truth is being positioned as a truth in the first place, but perhaps one of substandard quality, or even malformed in some way, but in no way polluted by actual lies. This positioning also seeks to identify the deliverer of the middle truth as misinformed or even incompetent at worst, as opposed to malicious or carrying any intent to harm.

Comparison to "bullshit" -
A closer term may be "bullshit". In the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, Elwood Blues, being accused by his brother of lying to him states, "I didn't lie to you. I just...bullshitted you." and clearly positions himself as "bullshitting" because he cared.

"But obviously the truth has to lie somewhere in the middle. And that’s what I’m giving you now, the middle truth. We were told what we could do, but, as it more seems is, it is more like a fair use response. So this is what you can do with our IP, and those are the rules that we followed. We took that as the permission, and we continued." -- source: PinballNews

middle truth by TimeBanditTheFirst April 17, 2015

Law of the Possible Middle Truth

The principle that between any two opposing truth claims lies not just a middle ground but an infinite spectrum of possible truths that participate in both sides while being reducible to neither. Under this law, the middle isn't a compromise position—it's a vast territory of possibilities. Between "he loves me" and "he loves me not" lies not just "he loves me sometimes" but infinite variations: loves me in some ways, not in others; loves me conditionally; loves the idea of me; loves me but can't show it; loves me and also loves someone else; loves me in a way I don't recognize. The possible middle truth is where most of life actually happens—the binary poles are just the distant edges of a vast spectrum.

Example: "She asked if her job was fulfilling. Binary truth said yes or no. The law of the possible middle truth opened infinity: fulfilling in some moments, draining in others; fulfilling the mission, not the paycheck; fulfilling her skills, not her soul; fulfilling compared to past jobs, not compared to dreams. The truth was in the possible middle, not the poles. She stopped asking yes/no and started mapping the spectrum."

Law of the Possible Middle Truth by AbzuInExile February 16, 2026