/di seet"/ , n.
1. the act or practice of deceiving; concealment or distortion of the truth for the purpose of misleading; duplicity; fraud; cheating: Once she exposed their deceit, no one ever trusted them again.
2. an act or device intended to deceive; trick; stratagem.
3. the quality of being deceitful; duplicity; falseness: a man full of deceit.
[ 1225-75; ME deceite deceit, ptp. of deceivre to DECEIVE ]
Syn. 1. deception, dissimulation. 1, 3 . DECEIT, GUILE, HYPOCRISY, DUPLICITY, FRAUD, TRICKERY refer either to practices designed to mislead or to the qualities that produce those practices. DECEIT is the quality that prompts intentional concealment or perversion of truth for the purpose of misleading: honest and without deceit. The quality of GUILE leads to craftiness in the use of deceit: using guile and trickery to attain one's ends. HYPOCRISY is the pretense of possessing qualities of sincerity, goodness, devotion, etc.: It was sheer hypocrisy for him to go to church.
DUPLICITY is the form of deceitfulness that leads one to give two impressions, either or both of which may be false: the duplicity of a spy working for two governments. FRAUD refers usually to the practice of subtle deceit or duplicity by which one may derive benefit at another's expense: an advertiser convicted of fraud. TRICKERY is the quality that leads to the use of tricks and habitual deception: notorious for his trickery in business deals.
Ant. 3. honesty, sincerity.