as in to pretend
to take on a false or deceptive appearance
as an actress she had been trained to dissimulate, so she had no trouble hiding her true feelings offstage as well
Synonyms & Similar Words
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1
as in deception
the inclination or practice of misleading others through lies or trickery
got whatever she wanted through shameless dissimulation
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in deceit
the pretending of having virtues, principles, or beliefs that one in fact does not have
teenagers indulging in dissimulation simply in order to be one of the in crowd
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of dissimulate
Tyler Cowen, Twin Cities, 5 July 2019
Verb
The result is that Republican politicians dissimulate much more, and of course there is no comparable primary competition.
—Tyler Cowen, Twin Cities, 5 July 2019
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dissimulate
Verb
-
That’s the point of him; as the Mission: Impossible franchise’s secret agent extraordinaire, Hunt can pretend to be anyone, accomplish basically any physical task, and uncover conspiracies with aplomb.—
David Sims,
The Atlantic,
23 May 2025
-
That old man was Trump—who had just been hospitalized with COVID-19, but was pretending that everything was fine—and yet the column was about America’s gerontocracy as a whole, and what Smith suggested was an unsustainable media omertà around it.—
Jon Allsop,
New Yorker,
23 May 2025
Noun
-
As an escaped convict posing as a beloved preacher, and as his gentle, upright twin, Robeson embodies a devastating split between appearance and truth, and whose uncanny doubling plays out in a community shaped by racial violence, spiritual deception, and economic precarity.—
Samantha Bergeson,
IndieWire,
21 May 2025
-
Ellie, however, cannot abide Joel’s deception, and interrupts to tell the truth to Gail, who then slaps Joel and tells him to leave.—
Adam B. Vary,
Variety,
19 May 2025
Noun
-
None of these spring explorations of sisterly deceit and self-deception has been able to surpass Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters as the recent genre peak.—
Daniel Fienberg,
HollywoodReporter,
28 May 2025
-
Starring Tom Cruise, the movies are loaded with action, deceit and globe-spanning adventures – everything a good spy film should be.—
Keith Langston,
People.com,
24 May 2025
Noun
-
Neither his fearsome resolve nor his supreme cunning—which had enabled him to vanquish his rivals and spiritually crush his inner circle—was in evidence in 1941.—
Stephen Kotkin,
Foreign Affairs,
19 Sep. 2017
-
Despite being outnumbered 50-to-1 by the Five Families of the Italian mafia, the Westies’ legendary brutality and cunning have given them the leverage necessary to share the spoils through a fragile détente.—
Nellie Andreeva,
Deadline,
18 Mar. 2025
Noun
-
No fussy affectations, just a deliberate tamping down of his more charismatic qualities.—
A.A. Dowd,
Rolling Stone,
25 Apr. 2025
-
Ivy-as-Marilyn is an inconsiderate, amphetamine guzzling faux-intellectual whose devotion to the acting craft is presented as a vainglorious affectation.—
Greg Evans,
Deadline,
10 Apr. 2025
Noun
-
More than £46 billion in loans had been disbursed by various lenders through the scheme, according to the Department for Business and Trade, but the agency also admitted there had been more than 100,000 cases of loss due to fraud and error.—
Robert Olsen,
Forbes.com,
28 May 2025
-
Instead of addressing waste and fraud and providing adults with a path to productive and independent lives through meaningful work, the Pritzker administration attacks these reform efforts.—
Regan Deering,
Chicago Tribune,
28 May 2025
Noun
-
But a groundswell of protest art was answering the call with a new kind of ardent feeling that damned the false piety and hypocrisy of homophobic Christian doctrine.—
Marc Weingarten,
Los Angeles Times,
22 May 2025
-
This becomes fuel for a spiraling breakdown, for Taylor and for all the other women, full of DMs and text-thread images shown on-camera as evidence of various hypocrisies.—
Kathryn VanArendonk,
Vulture,
19 May 2025
Cite this Entry
“Dissimulate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dissimulate. Accessed 4 Jun. 2025.
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