different between falseness vs falsify

English

Etymology

false +? -ness

Noun

falseness (countable and uncountable, plural falsenesses)

1. The characteristic of being false.
   • 2016, Justin Deschamps:

     All falseness collapses under the weight of denied truth.

Usage notes

• Falsehood, Falseness, Falsity; untruth, fabrication, fiction. Instances may be quoted in abundance from old authors to show that the first three words are often strictly synonymous; but the modern tendency has been decidedly in favor of separating them, falsehood standing for the concrete thing, an intentional lie; falseness, for the quality of being guiltily false or treacherous: as, he is justly despised for his falseness to his oath; and falsity, for the quality of being false without blame: as, the falsity of reasoning. — The Century Dictionary, 1911.

Synonyms

• fabrication
• falsehood, falsity
• fiction
• untruth
• See also Thesaurus:falsehood

Translations

English

Etymology

From French falsifier, from Late Latin falsific?re, present active infinitive of falsific? (“make false, corrupt, counterfeit, falsify”), from Latin falsificus, from falsus (“false”), corresponding to false +? -ify.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?f?ls?fa?/

Verb

falsify (third-person singular simple present falsifies, present participle falsifying, simple past and past participle falsified)

1. (transitive) To alter so as to make false; to make incorrect.

   • The Irish bards use to forge and falsify everything as they list, to please or displease any man.

2. (transitive) To misrepresent.
3. (transitive) To prove to be false.
   • 1730, Joseph Addison, The Evidences Of The Christian Religion

     Jews and Pagans united all their endeavors, under Julian the apostate, to baffle and falsify the prediction.

4. (transitive) To counterfeit; to forge.

5. (transitive, accounting) To show (an item of charge inserted in an account) to be wrong.
   • 1833, Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

     It will allow the account to stand, with liberty to the plaintiff to surcharge and falsify it

   • 1912, Peyton Boyle, The Federal Reporter: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit District Courts of the United States

     The chancery rules governing proceedings to surcharge and falsify accounts are applicable only where an account has been stated between the parties, or where something equivalent thereto has been done.

6. (transitive, obsolete) To baffle or escape.
   • a. 1680, Samuel Butler, Fragments of an intended second part of the foregoing satire

     For disputants (as swordsmen use to fence / With blunted foyles) engage with blunted sense; / And as th' are wont to falsify a blow, / Use nothing else to pass upon a foe […]

7. (transitive, obsolete) To violate; to break by falsehood.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

• falsify in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• falsify in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.