deceptive – English adjective declension

English adjective forms of deceptive

Adjective: deceptive

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Perifrastic

Comparativemore deceptive
Superlativemost deceptive

Sample Sentences

  • deceptive practices
  • Appearances can be deceptive.
  • But others declare that no Creature can be made or tranſmuted into a better or vvorſe, or transformed into another ſpecies or ſimilitude, by man, or devill. […] Martinus [i.e., Martin] Delrio the Jeſuit accounts this degeneration of Man into a Beaſt to be an illuſion, deceptive and repugnant to Nature; for, the ſoule of man cannot informe a beaſts body, […] [1653, John Bulwer, “Scene XXIIII. Cruell and Fantasticall Inventions of Men Practised upon Their Bodies in a Supposed Way of Bravery, and Wicked Practices both of Men and Devils to Alter and Deforme the Humane Fabricke”, in Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d; or, The Artificial Changling […], 2nd edition, London: […] William Hunt, →OCLC, page 521:]
  • […] at the opening of the campaign, the French, after various deceptive attempts on different places, suddenly invested Tournay. [1789, Frederick the Great, translated by Thomas Holcroft, The History of My Own Times, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, Part 1, Chapter 12, p. 163:]
  • 1846, Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, London: John W. Parker, 2nd ed., 1847, Preliminary Essay, Chapter 2, p. 10,
  • language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes
  • […] 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. [1978, Susan Sontag, chapter 2, in Illness as Metaphor, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 13:]

Etymology

From Middle French déceptif, from Latin dēceptīvus, from dēcipiō (“to deceive”). See: Latin Adjectives 'dēceptīvus'.