Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Want of truth; untruthfulness: as, the falseness of a report.
  • noun Want of integrity and veracity either in principle or in act; duplicity; deceit; double-dealing; unfaithfulness; treachery; perfidy; traitorousness: as, the falseness of a man's heart, or his falseness to his word.
  • noun Synonyms Falsity, etc. See falsehood.

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

  • noun The state of being false; contrariety to the fact; inaccuracy; want of integrity or uprightness; double dealing; unfaithfulness; treachery; perfidy

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

  • noun The characteristic of being false.

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

  • noun the quality of not being open or truthful; deceitful or hypocritical
  • noun the state of being false or untrue
  • noun unfaithfulness by virtue of being unreliable or treacherous

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

false +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • And this loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder.

    The Eustace Diamonds Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882 1872

  • You will find in all my previous notices of the French, continual insistance upon their natural Franchise, and also, if you take the least pains in analysis of their literature down to this day, that the idea of falseness is to them indeed more hateful than to any other

    The Pleasures of England Lectures given in Oxford John Ruskin 1859

  • And this loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly

    The Eustace Diamonds Anthony Trollope 1848

  • When you were in the conversation, it was about one thing: your misunderstanding of the credential argument and your inability to separate your own experience of reading one writer from broad and ridiculous generalizations about the "falseness" of literary fiction.

    Question of control... 2009

  • That, alone, which has to be guarded against is the falsity, the instinctive duplicity which _would fain_ regard this antithesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner did, — and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of no mean order.

    The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1872

  • But the Evangelists should be clear of every kind of falseness, not only that of lying, but also that of forgetfulness.

    Catena Aurea - Gospel of Matthew 1225?-1274 1842

  • I find I can pardon _all_ things in a man except purblindness, falseness of vision, -- for, indeed, does not that presuppose every other kind of falseness?

    The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I Thomas Carlyle 1838

  • I've always hated this kind of falseness, preferring instead to try to maintain a realistic view of the world, and I'm sure a lot of others here are the same.

    Wrong Planet Asperger / Autism Forums 2009

  • And this loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly Lizzie’s eye was apt to convey to the beholder.

    The Eustace Diamonds 1873

  • a kind of falseness in her, she suffered though she had nothing to blush for; more than once an almost irresistible desire sprang up in her heart to tell everything without reserve, whatever might come of it afterwards.

    On the Eve 1859

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