Deceive

//dɪˈsiːv// verb

verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To trick or mislead. transitive

    "It feels painful to begin seeing clearly, that you’ve been deceived by the very people and institutions you trusted to guide you."

  2. 2
    cause someone to believe an untruth wordnet
  3. 3
    be false to; be dishonest with wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
lead astrayabuseabusebamboozlebe untruthfulbefool

Example

More examples

"Nothing would tempt me to deceive him."

Etymology

From Middle English deceyven, from Anglo-Norman deceivre, from Latin dēcipiō (“to deceive; beguile; entrap”), from dē- (“from”) + capiō (“to seize”); see captive. Compare conceive, perceive, receive. Displaced native Old English beswīcan.

Related phrases

flatter to deceiveself-deceivewhat a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceivedouble cross

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.