Dissembling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Hiding or disguising true feelings or intentions ; acting in a false or deceptive way to mislead others
2. Presenting a false appearance by concealing facts or true motives ; making a show of something untrue to deceive
3. Concealing real thoughts or emotions behind a misleading facade ; pretending or putting on an act to hide genuine intent

Etymology: Latin "dissimulare" meant "to make unlike, to pretend not to be", built from "dis-" (apart) and "simul" (together, alike). The word arrived in English by way of Old French, where it became "dessambler" or "disembler," and English speakers in the 1400s adopted it in the form "dissemblen." The French spelling shifted under the influence of "sembler," meaning "to seem," and "semblance," which is why the word now sounds as if it has something to do with seeming. Its Latin ancestor, dissimulare, is an older relative that survives in English as "dissimulate," and the two words are doublets, two forms of one Latin source that came into English by separate routes. Before it reached English, the word had already been bent by French, and the new spelling made the idea of appearance more prominent. Old English had its own word for deceiving, "mīþan," but the Latin-derived term displaced it, and the native word disappeared from ordinary use.

Synonyms: concealing, masking, deceiving

Antonyms: revealing, disclosing