different between unfounded vs deceptive

English

Etymology

un- +? founded

Adjective

unfounded (not comparable)

1. Having no strong foundation; not based on solid reasons or facts.

   Synonyms: baseless, groundless, ungrounded

   an unfounded report; unfounded fears

   • 1663, Gideon Harvey, Archelogia Philosophica Nova, or, New Principles of Philosophy, London: Samuel Thomson, “To the Reader,”^[1]

     […] my chiefest design ever since the seventeenth year of my age […] consisted in elaborating such demonstrations in Natural Philosophy, as might serve to unfold the natures of Beings in relation to the Art of Physick, hitherto so uncertain, blind, and unfounded on Art […]

   • 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, Chapter 11, p. 61, footnote,^[2]

     […] such unfounded conjectures are best answered by neglect.

   • 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 18,^[3]

     The gloom of her first anticipations was proved to have been unfounded.

   • 1897, H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, Chapter 4,^[4]

     “He give a name,” said Mrs. Hall—an assertion which was quite unfounded—“but I didn’t rightly hear it.”

   • 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, Vintage International, 1990, “Day Three, Morning,” p. 137,^[5]

     […] the allegation that his lordship never allowed Jewish people to enter the house or any Jewish staff to be employed is utterly unfounded […]

2. Not having been founded or instituted.
   • 1980, Helen Louise Gardner, John Carey, English Renaissance studies (page 268)

     Even the great world as yet undiscovered, the cities as yet unfounded, and the history as yet unwritten, are lost: fallen from the beginning.

3. (obsolete) Bottomless.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 826-829,^[6]

     […] from them I go

     This uncouth errand sole, and one for all

     My self expose, with lonely steps to tread

     Th’ unfounded deep […]

   • 1685, William Clark, The Grand Tryal, or, Poetical Exercitations upon the Book of Job, Edinburgh, Part 3, Chapter 26, p. 210,^[7]

     He makes this Glob so spacious and fair

     Unfix’d, unprop’d, unfounded any where,

     Hang, like a Water-bubble in the Air.

Translations

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