1
as in deception
the inclination or practice of misleading others through lies or trickery
a crafty child given to frequent dissembling to get what she wants
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in deceit
the pretending of having virtues, principles, or beliefs that one in fact does not have
in the end the preacher's smarmy dissembling is discovered, and he is exposed as a fraud
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in lying
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Dissimilar Words
1
as in pretending
to present a false appearance of
he dissembled happiness at the news that his old girlfriend was getting married—to someone else
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2
as in dissimulating
to take on a false or deceptive appearance
children learn to dissemble at a surprisingly early age
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Recent Examples of dissembling
Alison Willmore, Vulture, 25 Sep. 2025
Noun
His inner self is right there and raw at the surface, leaving him incapable of dissembling, which is why Lancaster Dodd likes him so much.
—Alison Willmore, Vulture, 25 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dissembling
Noun
-
McCoy is charged with theft by deception, violation of oath of office, and three counts of false statements and writings.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
7 Jan. 2026
-
Harper got fired for the aforementioned deception.—
Alison Herman,
Variety,
6 Jan. 2026
Noun
-
Emotional confusion, even deceit, and certainly judgmental attitudes are in the air.—
Georgia Nicols,
Denver Post,
8 Jan. 2026
-
Standing against them is notorious kingpin Bada Chaudhary (Sharad Kelkar), whose syndicate operates through layers of deceit through corridors in Saudi Arabia, Ethopia, Italy, Thailand and the UK.—
Jesse Whittock,
Deadline,
7 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
He was found dead lying face up on his hotel bed with no signs of trauma, according to a Monday report from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.—
Kenan Draughorne,
Los Angeles Times,
14 Jan. 2022
Verb
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Parents reported that their children loved playing with the original Nékojita FuFu, pretending to fan their faces and blow-dry their hair.—
Sujita Sinha,
Interesting Engineering,
6 Jan. 2026
-
How naïve must Trump be to believe that Putin cares about Ukraine’s well-being after invading it, killing thousands of its people, kidnapping tens of thousands of Ukrainian children back to Russia, and continuing to bomb civilian apartment buildings while pretending to negotiate a peace deal?—
Tom Zirpoli,
Baltimore Sun,
6 Jan. 2026
Noun
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Of course, the retort is that this would be irritating and exasperating to be continually deluged with alerts about AI deceptiveness.—
Lance Eliot,
Forbes.com,
24 Aug. 2025
Noun
-
Activists have decried the decision as hypocrisy.—
Laura Paddison,
CNN Money,
6 Nov. 2025
-
The hypocrisy of monarchy in one flight #AbolishTheMonarchy.—
Jack Royston,
MSNBC Newsweek,
5 Nov. 2025
Adjective
-
In the dry California hills, an intentional community tries to build a pyre for one of its own, and, in the complex and mendacious aftermath, may end up sort of burning down the nation-state.—
Helen Shaw,
New Yorker,
14 Dec. 2025
-
To claim the opposite rings hollow at best, if not mendacious.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
10 Dec. 2025
Verb
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In estimating that online sales would result in overall annual profits of about $30-90 million, the Legislative Services Agency is assuming there would be an accompanying decrease in retail lottery sales.—
Kayla Dwyer,
IndyStar,
6 Jan. 2026
-
Launching a military operation and then assuming responsibility for governance shifts Washington toward a closed, coercive model of power – one that relies on force to establish authority and is prohibitively costly to sustain over time.—
Monica Duffy Toft,
The Conversation,
5 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Dissembling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dissembling. Accessed 10 Jan. 2026.
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