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disposition to deceive or lead into error; any declaration, artifice, or practice, which misleads another, or causes him to believe what is false; a contrivance to entrap; deception; a wily device; fraud. Making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit. Amos viii. 5. Friendly to man,…

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.

Subject to deceit; capable of being misled. Blind, and thereby deceivable. Milton.

Liability to be deceived or misled; as, the deceivableness of a child.

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 eye Of God al…

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.…

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

Failure; miscarriage. [Obs.] Possibility of defailance in degree or continuance. Comber.

mperfection; shortcoming; defect. "A deficiencyof blood." Arbuthnot. [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries. Buckle. Deficiency of a curve (Geom.), the amount by which the number of double points on a curve is short of the maximum for curves of the sam…

To spoil the form of; to mar in form; to misshape; to disfigure. Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world. Shak.

Unnatural or distorted in form; having a deformity; misshapen; disfigured; as, a deformed person; a deformed head. -- De*form"ed*ly, adv. -- De*form"ed*ness, n.

ounce. [Obs.] I defy the surety and the bond. Chaucer. For thee I have defied my constant mistress. Beau. & Fl.

r of; to debase; to bring shame or contempt upon; to disgrace; as, vice degrades a man. O miserable mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserved! Milton. He pride . . . struggled hard against this degrading passion. Macaulay.

ven unto the hells. Udall. Sometimes she dejects her eyes in a seeming civility; and many mistake in her a cunning for a modest look. Fuller.

The act of humbling or abasing one's self. Adoration implies submission and dejection. Bp. Pearson.

An offense or transgression against law; (Scots Law) an offense of a lesser degree; a misdemeanor. Every regulation of the civil code necessarily implies a delict in the event of its violation. Jeffrey.

The mistress of Samson, who betrayed him (Judges xvi.); hence, a harlot; a temptress. Other Delilahs on a smaller scale Burns met with during his Dumfries sojourn. J. C. Shairp.

Failure or omission of duty; a fault; a misdeed; an offense; a misdemeanor; a crime. The delinquencies of the little commonwealth would be represented in the most glaring colors. Motley.