deceptive
Appearance
See also: déceptive
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle French déceptif, from Latin dēceptīvus, from dēcipiō (“I deceive”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]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[1], 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[2], 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,[3]
- language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes
- 1978, Susan Sontag, chapter 2, in Illness as Metaphor[4], 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
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]misleading, attempting to deceive
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *keh₂p-
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ɛptɪv
- Rhymes:English/ɛptɪv/3 syllables
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations