faithless
Americanadjective
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not adhering to allegiance, promises, vows, or duty.
the faithless behavior of Benedict Arnold.
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not trustworthy; unreliable.
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without trust or belief.
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being without religious faith.
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(among Christians) bereft of Christian faith.
adjective
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unreliable or treacherous
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dishonest or disloyal
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having no faith or trust
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lacking faith, esp religious faith
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of faithless
First recorded in 1250–1300, faithless is from the Middle English word faithles. See faith, -less
Explanation
Someone who's faithless can't be trusted to be loyal. The faithless advisor to a king might turn out to be a traitor plotting against him. If you're faithless, you're untrustworthy. You might be a faithless government worker, stealing state secrets to sell to an enemy, or a faithless boyfriend, secretly dating other people behind your girlfriend's back. The earliest meaning of faithless was "lacking religious faith," although it came to mean "deceptive" by the middle of the 14th century. Faith comes from the Latin fides, "trust, faith, or belief."
Vocabulary lists containing faithless
The Picture of Dorian Gray
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This Week In Words: November 14–20, 2020
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myPerspectives 9.6
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Dictators may be faithless and brutal to their own people, but in the rarefied circle of fellow dictators, a kind of camaraderie flourishes.
From Salon • Mar. 14, 2026
A lone faithless elector in Washington state made it a three-way race by voting for Ronald Reagan.
From Slate • Aug. 9, 2024
The faithless often keep a low profile even in African countries where laws against blasphemy and renouncing religion are not on the books or are rarely enforced, such as Malawi in southeast Africa.
From Seattle Times • Dec. 18, 2021
Still, Ignatieff believes that holy texts of all denominations can be mined for comfort and insight even by the faithless, for a spirituality as customized as one of those Sweetgreen salads.
From New York Times • Nov. 7, 2021
Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
