The distinction is between the anonymous Continental Op of the detective novel, the man of honour who must nevertheless walk down mean streets, and the thoroughgoing Machiavel, the man who has learned not to be good.
Source: wiktionary
Machiavel
Synonyms for "machiavel" (30 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (6)
Strong matches (9)
Related words (15)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Sample sentences
2 total sentences available.
In pursuit of these ends, agents will find themselves in conflict with morality and we want them to be the sorts of people who can reject morality, yet we don’t want them to be Machiavels in the worst sense.
Source: wiktionary
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.