Other forms: deceptions
Deception is making somebody believe what is not true. Practise deception, an elaborate deception, guilty of deception.
It is broader than lying, because a deception can be carried out by silence, by arrangement or by a photograph as easily as by a false statement. In English law, obtaining property by deception was an offence until it was replaced by fraud in 2006. Self-deception is believing what you want rather than what is so. Note deceive, deceptive, and that deceptive can mean both misleading and surprisingly good — deceptively simple, which is genuinely ambiguous.
1noundeceptionMaking somebody believe what is not true.
“The magician's trick depends on deception; your eyes see only what he wants them to see.”
synonyms: deceit, trickery
deception is a misleading.
Also accepted in games: deceit, trickery
Latin decipere means to catch or ensnare — de- plus capere, to take. Deceiving somebody is catching them, which is a more physical image than the modern word suggests.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
dēcipiō — to deceive
Old French
decepcion
Middle English
decepcioun
English, today
deception
From Middle English decepcioun, from Old French decepcion, from Latin dēcipiō (“to deceive”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA