perfidious

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English[edit]

WOTD – 13 October 2011

Etymology[edit]

From Latin perfidiōsus (“treacherous”), from perfidia.

Pronunciation[edit]

Adjective[edit]

perfidious (comparative more perfidious, superlative most perfidious)

  1. Of, pertaining to, or representing perfidy; disloyal to what should command one's fidelity or allegiance. [from late 16th c.]
    • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:
      TRINCULO (speaking about Caliban): By this light, a most perfidious and drunken / monster: when his god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.
    • 1851, Oliver Goldsmith, “ch. 26”, in William C. Taylor, editor, Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome:
      The perfidious Ricimer soon became dissatisfied with Anthe'mius, and raised the standard of revolt.
    • 1905, Andrew Lang, “ch. 14”, in John Knox and the Reformation:
      [S]he knew Huntly for the ambitious traitor he was, a man peculiarly perfidious and self-seeking.
    • 2005 June 21, “Art: The Velocipede of Modernism”, in Time‎[1], archived from the original on 12 November 2011:
      When the Nazis branded Feininger a "degenerate artist" in 1937, he left 54 paintings for safekeeping with a Bauhaus friend named Hermann Klumpp. After the war, and for the rest of Feininger's life, the perfidious Klumpp refused to give them back.
    • 2015 August 28, John Dugdale, “Mario Vargas Llosa, Hola! and the shallow reading of a review”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:
      Enraged, the 2010 Nobel literature laureate thundered that he was “flabbergasted to learn that this kind of gossip can find its way into a respectable publication such as the Book Review” - a “slanderous and perfidious” instance of the convergence of posh and pop that his book inveighs against.

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