Definitions

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

  • noun Willful betrayal of fidelity, confidence, or trust; perfidy.
  • noun The act or an instance of such betrayal.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Violation of allegiance or of faith and confidence; treasonable or perfidious conduct; perfidy.
  • noun Synonyms See perfidious.

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

  • noun Violation of allegiance or of faith and confidence; treasonable or perfidious conduct; perfidy; treason.

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

  • noun Deliberate, often calculated, disregard for trust or faith.
  • noun The act of violating the confidence of another, usually for personal gain.
  • noun Treason.

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

  • noun betrayal of a trust
  • noun an act of deliberate betrayal

Etymologies

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

[Middle English trecherie, from Old French, from trichier, to trick, probably from Vulgar Latin *triccāre; see trick.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English trecherie, from Old French tricherie, trecherie, from tricher, trichier ("to cheat"), from Middle Dutch trek ("a trick"), from trekken ("to draw, play a trick on"). More at trick.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word treachery.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.