Othello error in practice. The phrase Othello error was first used in the book "Telling Lies" by Paul Ekman in 1985. The name was coined from Shakespeare's play "Othello", which provides an "excellent and famous example" of what can happen when fear and distress upon confrontation do not signal deception. In Shakespeare's "Othello", Othello falsely believes that his wife, Desdemona, has been cheating on him with another man. There, upon confronting his wife, Desdemona, about her love for another, she cries and denies, all the while aware that her mien will be taken as evidence of guilt by her jealous husband. Seeing
Othello (character) directors lean away from a North African Moorish interpretation but Shakespeare's textual references are unclear. Iago twice uses the word "Barbary" or "Barbarian" to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by the "tawny" Moors. Roderigo calls Othello "the thicklips", which seems to refer to European conceptions of Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally. Michael Neill, editor of the Oxford Shakespeare edition, notes that the earliest critical references to Othello's colour, (Thomas Rymer's 1693 critique of the play, and