false
Listen:Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
false/fɔːls/
▶adjective
- 1 not according with truth or fact.
■ invalid or illegal: false imprisonment.
- 2 deliberately intended to deceive.
■ artificial.
- 3 not actually so; illusory.
■ used in names of plants, animals, and gems that superficially resemble the thing properly so called, e.g. false scorpion.
- 4 disloyal.
– phrases
play someone false deceive or cheat someone.
play someone false deceive or cheat someone.
– derivatives
falsely adverb,
falseness noun,
falsity noun.
falsely adverb,
falseness noun,
falsity noun.
– origin OE fals ‘fraud’, from L. falsum ‘fraud’, neut. past part. of fallere ‘deceive’; reinforced or re-formed in ME from OFr. fals, faus ‘false’.
'false' also found in these Oxford entries:
alias
- artificial
- bivalence
- bodgie
- Boolean
- bum rap
- bum steer
- calumniate
- calumny
- casuist
- check
- crape hair
- delude
- dewclaw
- dicky
- diphtheria
- discredit
- disprove
- duff
- explode
- false acacia
- false alarm
- false colour
- false dawn
- false economy
- false friend
- false fruit
- false memory
- false move
- false pretences
- false rib
- false scorpion
- false start
- false step
- false topaz
- falsetto
- falsify
- faux
- faux naif
- faux pas
- fiction
- frame
- fringe
- fuzzy
- gammy
- hairpiece
- humbug
- hypercorrection
- illusion
