Dissimilate

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To make things different from each other or unlike ; to hide or disguise one's actual thoughts, feelings, or character
2. To cause things to become less alike or to increase their differences ; to pretend to be something other than what one truly is
3. To render things more distinct or varied from one another ; to mask or misrepresent one's genuine self or convictions

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "dissimilate" is that it is a mistake that stuck. In Classical Latin the verb was "dissimulare", meaning to conceal or pretend, which is where English gets "dissimulate" and the older "dissemble". Medieval Latin writers, however, reshaped it into "dissimilare" as though it were built from "similis" ("similar"), and that altered form is the ancestor of our word. Its first recorded appearance in English dates to 1841. The meaning follows from that false link to "similis" rather than from "dissimulare." To dissimilate is to make two sounds in a word less alike, so that a repeated sound changes to a different one. The "dis-" prefix, meaning apart or opposite, reverses the sense of similarity, and the "-ate" ending is a standard suffix for forming verbs. The vowel in the middle may have been nudged by "assimilate," which means to make alike, and the two words sit as near opposites in English. French has a parallel form, "dissimiler," and "dissimulate" and "dissemble" remain English doublets of the same Latin root.