If someone asks me a question, I give them an answer based on my understanding, and it turns out not to be so, I am not lying. At the time, I thought it was to be so.
No, whether you like to hear it or not (which you clearly are a person who does not want to hear it) you lied.[1] There is no other noun/verb in the English language to describe the act of telling a false statement.
Naturally, telling a false statement with intention to deceive is morally unethical, whereas just being the bringer of false statements is not. I think that's where you and everyone else gets hung up on the word "lie" because you firmly attach the notion of intent to the word. That is not the case with every lie, and if I need to reference the dictionary to show that you are wrong then so be it. It is just often the case that a lie said with intent to deceive, but it by no means is the rule.
If people would work as hard to remove the negative connotation around the word rather than trying to do mental gymnastics to get out of being labelled with it we would all be more honest and better off. We all lie sometime, after all, but what we can always avoid is intention of deceit. Doing some mental gymnastics to try and avoid being labelled a liar actually, in itself, makes you deceitful.
No, whether you like to hear it or not (which you clearly are a person who does not want to hear it) you lied.[1] There is no other noun/verb in the English language to describe the act of telling a false statement.
Naturally, telling a false statement with intention to deceive is morally unethical, whereas just being the bringer of false statements is not. I think that's where you and everyone else gets hung up on the word "lie" because you firmly attach the notion of intent to the word. That is not the case with every lie, and if I need to reference the dictionary to show that you are wrong then so be it. It is just often the case that a lie said with intent to deceive, but it by no means is the rule.
If people would work as hard to remove the negative connotation around the word rather than trying to do mental gymnastics to get out of being labelled with it we would all be more honest and better off. We all lie sometime, after all, but what we can always avoid is intention of deceit. Doing some mental gymnastics to try and avoid being labelled a liar actually, in itself, makes you deceitful.
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie