deceptive
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: déceptive
Etymology
From Middle French déceptif, from Latin dēceptīvus, from dēcipiō (“I deceive”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
deceptive (comparative more deceptive, superlative most deceptive)
- Likely or attempting to deceive.
- Synonyms: misleading; see also Thesaurus:deceptive
- deceptive practices
- Appearances can be deceptive.
- 1653, John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis, London: William Hunt, Scene 24, page 521:
- […] others declare that no Creature can be made or transmuted into a better or worse, or transformed into another species […] and Martinus Delrio the Jesuit accounts this degeneration of Man into a Beast to be an illusion, deceptive and repugnant to Nature;
- 1789, Frederick the Great, translated by Thomas Holcroft, The History of My Own Times, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, Part 1, Chapter 12, p. 163:
- […] at the opening of the campaign, the French, after various deceptive attempts on different places, suddenly invested Tournay.
- 1846, Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, London: John W. Parker, 2nd ed., 1847, Preliminary Essay, Chapter 2, p. 10,
- language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes
- 1978, Susan Sontag, chapter 2, in Illness as Metaphor, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 13:
- […] it is characteristic of TB that many of its symptoms are deceptive—liveliness that comes from enervation, rosy cheeks that look like a sign of health but come from fever—and an upsurge of vitality may be a sign of approaching death.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
misleading, attempting to deceive
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