Adjacent Words

Deceit definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DECE'IT,
1. Literally, a catching or ensnaring. Hence, the misleading of a person; the leading of another person to believe what is false, or not to believe what is true, and thus to ensnare him; fraud; fallacy; cheat; any declaration, artifice or practice, which misleads another, or causes him to believe what is false.
My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. Job 27.
2. Stratagem; artifice; device intended to mislead.
They imagine deceits all the day long. Psalms 38.
3. In scripture, that which is obtained by guile, fraud or oppression.
Their houses are full of deceit. Jeremiah 5. Zeph. I.
4. In law, any trick, device, craft, collusion, shift, covin, or underhand practice, used to defraud another.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the quality of being fraudulent [syn: fraudulence, deceit]
2: a misleading falsehood [syn: misrepresentation, deceit, deception]
3: the act of deceiving [syn: deception, deceit, dissembling, dissimulation]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle English deceite, from Anglo-French, from Latin decepta, feminine of deceptus, past participle of decipere Date: 14th century 1. the act or practice of deceiving ; deception 2. an attempt or device to deceive ; trick 3. the quality of being deceitful ; deceitfulness

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 the act or process of deceiving or misleading, esp. by concealing the truth. 2 a dishonest trick or stratagem. 3 willingness to deceive. Etymology: ME f. OF f. past part. of deceveir f. L decipere deceive (as DE-, capere take)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Deceit De*ceit", n. [OF. deceit, des[,c]ait, decept (cf. deceite, de[,c]oite), fr. L. deceptus deception, fr. decipere. See Deceive.] 1. An attempt or disposition to deceive or lead into error; any declaration, artifice, or practice, which misleads another, or causes him to believe what is false; a contrivance to entrap; deception; a wily device; fraud. Making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit. --Amos viii. 5. Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. --Milton. Yet still we hug the dear deceit. --N. Cotton. 2. (Law) Any trick, collusion, contrivance, false representation, or underhand practice, used to defraud another. When injury is thereby effected, an action of deceit, as it called, lies for compensation. Syn: Deception; fraud; imposition; duplicity; trickery; guile; falsifying; double-dealing; stratagem. See Deception.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(deceits) Deceit is behaviour that is deliberately intended to make people believe something which is not true. They have been involved in a campaign of deceit. = deception N-VAR

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

de-set' (mirmah; (dolos)): The intentional misleading or beguiling of another; in Scripture represented as a companion of many other forms of wickedness, as cursing (Ps 10:7), hatred (Pr 26:24), theft, covetousness, adultery, murder (Mr 7:22; Ro 1:29). The Revised Version (British and American) introduces the word in Pr 14:25; 2Th 2:10; but in such passages as Ps 55:11; Pr 20:17; 26:26; 1Th 2:3, renders a variety of words, more accurately than the King James Version, by "oppression," "falsehood," "guile," "error."

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Deception, fraud, imposition, imposture, finesse, artifice, duplicity, guile, trickery, chicanery, cozenage, cheating, double-dealing, crooked ways, dark ways, underhandedness, deceitfulness.

Moby Thesaurus

art, artful dodge, artfulness, artifice, blind, cheating, chicane, chicanery, con, con game, conspiracy, contrivance, coup, craft, craftiness, cunning, cute trick, deceitfulness, deception, defrauding, design, device, dishonesty, dissemblance, dissimulation, dodge, double-cross, double-dealing, duplicity, expedient, fakement, falseheartedness, falseness, feint, fetch, flam, flimflam, fraud, fraudulence, furtiveness, gambit, game, gimmick, grift, guile, gyp, hanky-panky, hoax, humbug, hypocrisy, indirection, insidiousness, intrigue, jugglery, knavery, little game, maneuver, misrepresentation, monkey business, move, overreaching, plot, ploy, racket, red herring, ruse, scam, scheme, sell, sham, shift, shiftiness, sleight, slyness, sneak attack, sneakiness, stratagem, strategy, subterfuge, surreptitiousness, swindle, tactic, trapping, treacherousness, treachery, trick, trickery, underhandedness, wile, wily device