sham

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

• noun Something false or empty that is purported to be genuine.
• noun Deceitfulness or pretense.
• noun One who claims to be what he or she is not; an impostor or fraud.
• noun A decorative cover made to simulate an article of household linen and used over or in place of it.
• adjective Not genuine; fake.
• intransitive verb To put on the false appearance of; feign.
• intransitive verb To assume a false appearance or character; dissemble.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To deceive; trick; cheat; delude with false pretenses.
• To obtrude by fraud or imposition.
• To make a pretense of in order to deceive; feign; imitate: as, to sham illness.
• To pretend; make false pretenses; pretend to be, do, etc., what one is not, does not, does not mean, etc.
• noun Shame; disgrace; fault.
• noun A trick put upon one; a trick or device that deludes or disappoints expectation; fraud; imposture; make-believe; humbug: as, an age of shams.
• noun Some device meant to give a thing a different outward appearance, as of neatness and finish, or to imitate something which it is not. Specifically
• noun A false pillow-cover; a pillow-sham.
• noun A strip of fine linen, often embroidered, put under the upper edge of the bed-coverings and turned over, as if forming the upper end of the sheet.
• noun plural Gaiters.
• False; counterfeit; pretended: as, a sham fight.
• Synonyms Mock, spurious, make-believe.

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

• adjective False; counterfeit; pretended; feigned; unreal.
• noun That which deceives expectation; any trick, fraud, or device that deludes and disappoints; a make-believe; delusion; imposture; humbug.
• noun A false front, or removable ornamental covering.
• noun a covering to be laid on a pillow.
• intransitive verb To make false pretenses; to deceive; to feign; to impose.
• transitive verb To trick; to cheat; to deceive or delude with false pretenses.
• transitive verb rare To obtrude by fraud or imposition.
• transitive verb To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign.
• transitive verb to feign sickness; to malinger. Hence a malingerer is called, in sailors' cant, Sham Abram, or Sham Abraham.

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

• adjective Intended to deceive; false.
• noun A fake; an imitation that purports to be genuine.
• noun Trickery, hoaxing.
• noun A decorative cover for a pillow.
• verb To deceive, cheat, lie.

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

• verb make believe with the intent to deceive
• adjective adopted in order to deceive
• verb make a pretence of
• noun a person who makes deceitful pretenses
• noun something that is a counterfeit; not what it seems to be