Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To cause to believe what is not true; mislead.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To catch by guile; ensnare.
  • intransitive verb To practice deceit.
  • intransitive verb To give a false impression.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To mislead by a false appearance or statement; cause to believe what is false, or to disbelieve what is true; delude.
  • To cause to fail in fulfilment or realization; frustrate or disappoint.
  • . To take from; rob stealthily.
  • To cause to pass; while away.
  • Synonyms To beguile, cheat, overreach, circumvent, dupe, fool, gull, cozen, hoodwink.
  • In fencing, to evade, as an attack or parry, thus causing an opponent to lose the contact or feel of one's foil.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To lead into error; to cause to believe what is false, or disbelieve what is true; to impose upon; to mislead; to cheat; to disappoint; to delude; to insnare.
  • transitive verb To beguile; to amuse, so as to divert the attention; to while away; to take away as if by deception.
  • transitive verb obsolete To deprive by fraud or stealth; to defraud.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To trick or mislead.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb cause someone to believe an untruth
  • verb be false to; be dishonest with

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English deceiven, from Old French deceveir, from Vulgar Latin *dēcipēre, from Latin dēcipere, to ensnare, deceive : dē-, de- + capere, to seize; see kap- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English deceyven, from Old French deceivre (Modern French décevoir), from Latin decipere ("to deceive, beguile, entrap"), from de- ("from") + capere ("to seize"); see captive. Compare conceive, perceive, receive.

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Examples

  • I myself am very fond of the plain cheese pizza, but don't let the name deceive you.

    Constant Cravings Jay 2007

  • I myself am very fond of the plain cheese pizza, but don't let the name deceive you.

    Archive 2007-01-01 Jay 2007

  • Appearances, however, which have been deceptive before, may again deceive; and the history of nations teams with proofs that when once they have overstepped the bounds of reason, albeit with the purpose of returning when their ends shall have been accomplished, the very events which their own passion has produced frequently raise a barrier against their retreat, and nulla vestigia retrorsum becomes their doom.

    The Secession Movement in America 1861

  • Sinners herein deceive themselves, for, though the sentence be not executed speedily, it will be executed the more severely at last.

    Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon) 1721

  • (don't let the name deceive you, it just monitors bandwidth of your phone's data connection, regardless of the way it connects, be it HSDPA, 3G, GPRS etc).

    Original Signal - Transmitting Gadgets 2008

  • h. 264, "Ipod video" (. m4v): Don't let the name deceive you!

    VideoHelp.com Forum 2009

  • Baltar’s ability to deceive is clearly second-nature, do we really want to find out what else he’s been hiding?

    BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: Ends on a Happy Note | the TV addict 2007

  • Thomas Paine, during the Revolutionary War, argued in The Crisis that there are serious moments in the life of a country when "to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other."

    Tony Blankley: Afghan War Becoming a Bloody Farce 2010

  • I made this cake about three weeks ago for no particular reason other than I wanted to make a plain 'homey' cake but don't let the simplicity of the name deceive you.

    Orange Sour Cream Bundt Cake 2008

  • I made this cake about three weeks ago for no particular reason other than I wanted to make a plain 'homey' cake but don't let the simplicity of the name deceive you.

    Archive 2008-01-01 2008

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