Other forms: bending the truth; bent the truth; bends the truth
To bend the truth is to slightly misrepresent the facts to make a situation seem better, more impressive, or less embarrassing than it actually is.
When someone bends the truth, they usually stay close to the real story, but stretch or omit certain details. In a job interview, it would be bending the truth to say that you have relevant experience with a particular software system when you've actually only used it once for unrelated work. Similarly, telling your parents that you're spending the night with a friend, but leaving out that there's going to be a big party there and her parents are out of town, is bending the truth. It's not an outright lie, but it doesn't accurately represent the whole truth.