different between deceptive vs seeming

English

Etymology

From Middle French déceptif, from Latin d?cept?vus, from d?cipi? (“I deceive”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?.?s?p.t?v/

Adjective

deceptive (comparative more deceptive, superlative most deceptive)

1. Likely or attempting to deceive.

   Synonym: misleading

   • 1653, John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis, London: William Hunt, Scene 24, p. 521,^[1]

     […] others declare that no Creature can be made or transmuted into a better or worse, or transformed into another species […] and Martinus Delrio the Jesuit accounts this degeneration of Man into a Beast to be an illusion, deceptive and repugnant to Nature;

   • 1789, Thomas Holcroft (translator), The History of My Own Times by Frederick the Great, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, Part 1, Chapter 12, p. 163,^[2]

     […] at the opening of the campaign, the French, after various deceptive attempts on different places, suddenly invested Tournay.

   • 1846, Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, London: John W. Parker, 2nd ed., 1847, Preliminary Essay, Chapter 2, p. 10,^[3]

     language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes

   • 1978, Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Chapter 2, p. 13,^[4]

     […] it is characteristic of TB that many of its symptoms are deceptive—liveliness that comes from enervation, rosy cheeks that look like a sign of health but come from fever—and an upsurge of vitality may be a sign of approaching death.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:deceptive

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?si?m??/
• Homophones: seaming, seming
• Rhymes: -i?m??

Verb

seeming

1. present participle of seem

Adjective

seeming (comparative more seeming, superlative most seeming)

1. Appearing to the eye or mind (distinguished from, and often opposed to, real or actual).

   Synonyms: apparent, ostensible

   • 1671, Aphra Behn, The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband, London: Thomas Dring, Act II, Scene 5, pp. 32-33,^[1]

     I'le hide my anger in a seeming calm,
     And what I have to do, consult the while,
     And mask my vengeance underneath a smile.

   • 1765, Oliver Goldsmith, Essays, London: W. Griffin, Essay 18, p. 150,^[2]

     Of all the English philosophers, I most reverence Bacon, that great and hardy genius: he it is who, undaunted by the seeming difficulties that oppose, prompts human curiosity to examine every part of nature;

   • 1876, George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 27,^[3]

     […] she was overcome like the thirsty one who is drawn toward the seeming water in the desert […]

   • 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, Chapter 10,^[4]

     […] though they marched in seeming peace, the hearts of all the army, from the highest to the lowest, were downcast, and with every mile that they went north foreboding of evil grew heavier on them.

Derived terms

• seemingly
• seemingness

Translations

Noun

seeming (countable and uncountable, plural seemings)

1. Outward appearance.
   • 1971, Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man, New York: Viking, p. 162,^[7]

     I am not what I seemed to her, he thought, and doubtless she is not what she seemed to me, but it is our lot to be irrevocably condemned to seemings and to deserve them too.

2. (obsolete) Apprehension; judgement.
   • 1604, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, London, Preface, p. 39,^[8]

     Nothing more cleare vnto their seeming, then that a new Jerusalem being often spoken of in Scripture, they vndoubtedly were themselues that newe Ierusalem,

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 8, lines 736-738,^[9]

     […] in her ears the sound
     Yet rung of his perswasive words, impregn’d
     With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth;

Translations