forgery
[fawr-juh-ree, fohr-]
- the crime of falsely making or altering a writing by which the legal rights or obligations of another person are apparently affected; simulated signing of another person's name to any such writing whether or not it is also the forger's name.
- the production of a spurious work that is claimed to be genuine, as a coin, a painting, or the like.
- something, as a coin, a work of art, or a writing, produced by forgery.
- an act of producing something forged.
- Archaic. invention; artifice.
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Origin of forgery
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
falsification, imposition, cheat, imposture, pseudo, phony, twin, imitation, fake, carbon, copy, fabrication, sham, fraudulence, bogus, imitating, lookalikeExamples from the Web for forgery
Contemporary Examples
But Colette sees a more serious problem with forgery, beyond the distorting effect forgery has on the art market.
On the other hand, if the text is a forgery, then it is a better forgery than previously thought.
On the one hand, tests designed to prove that the text is a forgery failed to establish its inauthenticity.
The single test that would definitively prove whether or not GJW is a forgery would also destroy it.
Then again … as I said, for a forgery to deceive at all, it has to preserve a great many features of a genuine object.
Historical Examples
I was arrested for forgery, tried, found guilty, and transported for life.
Henry DunbarM. E. Braddon
He had heard the story of the forgery hinted at, but he had never heard its details.
Henry DunbarM. E. Braddon
It never occurred to me then that it might have been intended to look like a forgery.
Wilfrid CumbermedeGeorge MacDonald
The excellence of the forgery may be fairly adduced as an argument that it is not a forgery at all.
MenexenusPlato
Why, that must be the secretary who was suspected of forgery at the Embassy in London, and got dismissed.
The Eternal CityHall Caine
forgery
- the act of reproducing something for a deceitful or fraudulent purpose
- something forged, such as a work of art or an antique
- criminal law
- the false making or altering of any document, such as a cheque or character reference (and including a postage stamp), or any tape or disc on which information is stored, intending that anyone shall accept it as genuine and so act to his or another's prejudice
- something forged
- criminal law the counterfeiting of a seal or die with intention to defraud
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for forgery
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper