imposture

American  

[im-pos-cher] / ɪmˈpɒs tʃər /

noun

1. the action or practice of imposing fraudulently upon others.

2. deception using an assumed character, identity, or name, as by an impostor.

3. an instance or piece of fraudulent imposition.

   Synonyms:

   cheat, humbug, deception, swindle, hoax, fraud

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imposture British  

/ ɪmˈpɒstrəs, ɪmˈpɒstərəs, ɪmˈpɒstʃə /

noun

1. the act or an instance of deceiving others, esp by assuming a false identity

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Other Word Forms

• impostrous
  adjective
• imposturous
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of imposture

1530–40; < Late Latin impostūra, equivalent to Latin impost ( us ) past participle of impōnere ( see impostor, impone) + -ūra -ure

Explanation

Imposture is the act of pretending to be someone else. Everyone knows the Elvis impersonator isn’t really Elvis himself, but your imposture as Elvis’s long-lost daughter might actually fool some people. Imposture comes from the verb, to impose, and it has the sense of deliberately deceiving someone. Someone who perpetrates an imposture is an imposter. If you go to a job interview and pretend that you graduated from Harvard when really you never even went to college, that is an act of imposture. If the interviewer finds out, she might disgustedly say to you, “Get out, you imposter!”

Example Sentences

Imposture turns on a "ridiculous mistake" which somehow fooled credulous reviewers; A Quiet Adjustment is "three hundred pages of repression, of a particularly English kind".

From The Guardian • Aug. 26, 2011

Imposture, be it known then,—known it must and shall be,—is hateful, unendurable to God and man.

From Latter-Day Pamphlets by Carlyle, Thomas

Humphry Wickham of Swakely Esq; whose Person and Character he pretended to represent, and in which Imposture he made his last Exit.

From The Notorious Impostor and Diego Redivivus by Settle, Elkanah

Robert Browning, in The Two Poets of Croisic thus salutes him: Ay, sharpest shrewdest steel that ever stabbed To death Imposture through the armor-joints!

From Flowers of Freethought (First Series) by Foote, G. W. (George William)

"The Sum of it was Malice, Threatening, and Circumstances of Imposture in the Girl."

From A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 by Notestein, Wallace