Scholars of hadith have noted various documentary and textual criteria for criticizing the texts of hadiths and identifying relevant ones. Verbal reticence is used Arabic in two opposing senses: the rules of the Arabic language and hindering eloquence. The proponents of this criterion seek to prove the existence of this issue in some hadiths. On the other side, the hadiths known to have verbal distortion have been challenged by some others and are not considered examples of verbal distortion. In fact, due to the existence of the phenomenon of transfer to meaning in the hadiths, it is difficult to prove the literalness of the hadiths, and only such a criterion can be applied to the hadiths where the narrator claims to attribute the words of the hadith to Imam (pbuh). Therefore, this criterion cannot be proven in its entirety. This article aims to review and criticize the concept of verbal distortion and the effect of this criterion in reviewing hadiths. Finally, it can be said that content distortion is the most suitable alternative in distinguishing authentic hadiths from fake ones, and opposition to any certain knowledge such as the Qur'an, Sunnah, reason, principles of religion, historical facts, etc. is a criterion for identifying hadiths.