Other forms: deceived, deceiving, deceives
To deceive someone is to make them believe something you know is untrue. The seller who says the car has never been in a crash; the friend who nods along about where she spent Saturday.
Deceive is heavier and more formal than 'lie to', and it reaches further: you can deceive by silence, by a doctored receipt, by letting someone go on believing the wrong thing. It takes a person as its object — you deceive your parents, not the truth — and the pattern 'deceive someone INTO doing something' covers tricking them into an action. The nouns split in two: deception is the act, deceit is the habit, and deceptive describes the thing that misleads. 'Deceive yourself' means refusing to see what is in front of you. Appearances deceive as well: a calm face deceives everyone about how frightened he is.
1verbdeceiveTo make someone believe something that is not true.
“He deceived his family for years about the size of his debts.”
synonyms: mislead, dupe
2verbgiveTo give a false impression.
“The quiet street deceives you; by eight in the morning it is full of lorries.”
3verbrefuseTo refuse to accept what is true about your own situation (deceive yourself).
“Don't deceive yourself that he is going to change.”
Also accepted in games: trick, mislead
Deceive came through Middle English deceyven and Anglo-Norman deceivre from the Latin dēcipiō, 'to deceive, beguile, entrap' — built from dē-, 'from', and capiō, 'to seize'. To deceive is to catch somebody away, the way a bird is taken in a trap. The same capiō sits inside conceive, perceive and receive; the Old English word it pushed out was beswīcan.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
dēcipiō — to deceive; beguile; entrap
Anglo-Norman
deceivre
Middle English
deceyven
English, today
deceive
Built from
From Middle English deceyven, from Anglo-Norman deceivre, from Latin dēcipiō (“to deceive; beguile; entrap”), from dē- (“from”) + capiō (“to seize”); see captive. Compare conceive, perceive, receive. Displaced native Old English beswīcan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA