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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.…

Anything intended to lead into a snare; a lure that deceives and misleads into danger, or into the power of an enemy; a bait.

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.

he guise or appearance of; especially, to conceal by an unusual dress, or one intended to mislead or deceive. Bunyan was forced to disguise himself as a wagoner. Macaulay.

To deceive; to trick; to mislead by imposing on one's credulity; to gull; as, dupe one by flattery. Ne'er have I duped him with base counterfeits. Coleridge.

aise, or kick up, dust, to make a commotion. [Colloq.] -- To throw dust in one's eyes, to mislead; to deceive. [Colloq.]

of different senses, with intent to deceive; to use ambiguous expressions with a view to mislead; as, to equivocate is the work of duplicity. All that Garnet had to say for him was that he supposed he meant to equivocate. Bp. Stillingfleet.

The use of expressions susceptible of a double signification, with a purpose to mislead. There being no room for equivocations, there is no need of distinctions. Locke.

Misleading; misled; mistaking. [Obs.] An erroneous conscience commands us to do what we ought to omit. Jer. Taylor.

Embodying or pertaining to a fallacy; illogical; fitted to deceive; misleading; delusive; as, fallacious arguments or reasoning. -- Fal*la"cious*ly, adv. -Fal*la"cious*ness, n.

Deceptive or false appearance; deceitfulness; that which misleads the eye or the mind; deception. Winning by conquest what the first man lost, By fallacy surprised. Milton.

To mislead by want of truth; to deceive. [Obs.] In his falsed fancy. Spenser.

puzzle; -- alluding to the habits of some animals of running back over the same track to mislead their pursuers. Brewer.

To deceive; to cheat; to mislead; to trick; to defraud. The rulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed. Dryden. I'm not gulling him for the emperor's service. Coleridge.

An imposition under fair pretenses; something contrived in order to deceive and mislead; a trick by cajolery; a hoax.

Fig.: A misleading influence; a decoy. Scared and guided by the ignis fatuus of popular superstition. Jer. Taylor.

Deceiving; deluding; misleading.

that. "Some things they do in that they are men . . . ; some things in that they are men misled and blinded with error." Hooker. -- In the name of, in behalf of; on the part of; by authority; as, it was done in the name of the people; -- often used in invocation, swearing, praying, and the like. -- To be in for it.…