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Full of, or characterized by, deceit; serving to mislead or insnare; trickish; fraudulent; cheating; insincere. Harboring foul deceitful thoughts. Shak.

Tendency to mislead or deceive. "The deceitfulness of riches." Matt. xiii. 22.

To lead into error; to cause to believe what is false, or disbelieve what is true; to impose upon; to mislead; to cheat; to disappoint; to delude; to insnare. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. 2 Tim. iii. 13. Nimble jugglers that deceive the eye. Shak. What can 'scape the e…

One who deceives; one who leads into error; a cheat; an impostor. The deceived and the deceiver are his. Job xii. 16.

The act of deceiving or misleading. South.

Tending to deceive; having power to mislead, or impress with false opinions; as, a deceptive countenance or appearance. Language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes. Trench. Deceptive cadence (Mus.), a cadence on the subdominant, or in some foreign key, postponing the final close.…

To lead into danger by artifice; to lure into a net or snare; to entrap; to insnare; to allure; to entice; as, to decoy troops into an ambush; to decoy ducks into a net. Did to a lonely cot his steps decoy. Thomson. E'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy. Goldsmith.…

To lead forth. [A Latinism] He should hither deduce a colony. Selden.

To lead forth or out. [Obs.] A people deducted out of the city of Philippos. Udall.

the sea; as, a deep-sea line (i. e., a line to take soundings at a great depth); deep-sea lead; deep-sea soundings, explorations, etc.

To become deeper; as, the water deepens at every cast of the lead; the plot deepens. His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun. Byron.

urning from a right line or proper course; a bending, esp. downward; deviation. The other leads to the same point, through certain deflections. Lowth.

To lead from truth or into error; to mislead the mind or judgment of to beguile; to impose on; to dupe; to make a fool of. To delude the nation by an airy phantom. Burke.

The act of deluding; deception; a misleading of the mind. Pope.

Apt or fitted to delude; tending to mislead the mind; deceptive; beguiling; delusory; as, delusive arts; a delusive dream. Delusive and unsubstantial ideas. Whewell. -- De*lu"sive*ly, adv. -- De*lu"sive*ness, n.

A leader of the rabble; one who attempts to control the multitude by specious or deceitful arts; an unprincipled and factious mob orator or political leader.

h from; as, we can not depart from our rules; to depart from a title or defense in legal pleading. If the plan of the convention be found to depart from republican principles. Madison.

The desertion by a party to any pleading of the ground taken by him in his last antecedent pleading, and the adoption of another. Bouvier.

To lay bare; to expose. The exposure and depluming of the leading humbugs of the age. De Quincey.

A leading or drawing off of water from a stream or source. [Obs.] T. Burnet.