deceptive

adjective

de·cep·tive | \ di-ˈsep-tiv

Definition of deceptive

: tending or having power to cause someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid : tending or having power to deceive a deceptive appearance a pitcher with a deceptive windup

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Examples of deceptive in a Sentence

in his deceptive answer about the vehicle's history, the salesman said that the used car had never been hit by another car a mail-order firm indicted for deceptive business practices

Recent Examples on the Web

Headed by Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education wants to eliminate laws governing for-profit trade and technical schools and roll back regulations protecting students against deceptive practices. — Chuck Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "The State of American Trade Schools," 13 Mar. 2019 We, therefore, call on the FTC to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices stemming from this incident. — Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica, "Verizon throttling could trigger FTC investigation of deceptive practices," 27 Aug. 2018 On the other hand, Twenge objects to their use of percent variance, which was called out as deceptive by renowned psychologist Robert Rosenthal back in 1979. — Jessica Wapner, SELF, "How Worried Do You Really Need to Be About Your Screen Time?," 7 Feb. 2019 Facebook does say this is one move in a broader effort to clamp down on deceptive use of its platform. — David Z. Morris, Fortune, "Facebook Will Use Postcards To Fight Foreign Meddling In U.S. Politics," 19 Feb. 2018 Facebook promised to get consent from users before sharing their data with third parties, and to avoid making deceptive claims about its privacy practices. — David Meyer, Fortune, "Facebook Shared Your Data With Phone Makers Like Apple. Here's Why This Scandal Could Be Huge," 4 June 2018 The complaint alleged the various companies used false and deceptive sales practices urging consumers to bundle all of their balances into a single loan that would allow consumers to make small monthly payments at low interest rates. — David Lyons, Sun-Sentinel.com, "Luxury cars, waterfront home up for auction from alleged debt relief fraud case," 19 Mar. 2018 The suit also says distributors used deceptive scientific claims to back up this practice despite warnings from the Federal Drug Administration that high-dose opioid usage was increasing overdose and mortality in users. — Maria Clark, NOLA.com, "A Metairie treatment center is suing Walmart, other drug sellers as opioid addiction surges," 7 Feb. 2018 Sometimes, the amount of public shame that appears to be occurring is fundamentally deceptive, bolstered by trolls and bots to amplify fake outrage. — Aja Romano, Vox, "Why the Kevin Hart Oscars backlash is different from other recent public shamings," 5 Jan. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'deceptive.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.