[syn: deceptive, misleading, shoddy]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Deceptive \De*cep"tive\, a. [Cf. F. d['e]ceptif. See Deceive.]
Tending to deceive; having power to mislead, or impress with
false opinions; as, a deceptive countenance or appearance.
[1913 Webster]
Language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper
reality from our eyes. --Trench.
[1913 Webster]
Deceptive cadence (Mus.), a cadence on the subdominant, or
in some foreign key, postponing the final close.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
deceptive
adj 1: causing one to believe what is not true or fail to
believe what is true; "deceptive calm"; "a delusory
pleasure" [syn: deceptive, delusory]
2: designed to deceive or mislead either deliberately or
inadvertently; "the deceptive calm in the eye of the storm";
"deliberately deceptive packaging"; "a misleading
similarity"; "statistics can be presented in ways that are
misleading"; "shoddy business practices" [syn: deceptive,
misleading, shoddy]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
120 Moby Thesaurus words for "deceptive":
Barmecidal, Barmecide, aberrant, abroad, adrift, airy, all abroad,
all off, all wrong, amiss, apparent, apparently sound,
apparitional, askew, astray, at fault, autistic, awry, beguiling,
beside the mark, bogus, casuistic, catchy, chimeric, colorable,
corrupt, counterfeit, deceitful, deceiving, defective, deluding,
delusional, delusionary, delusive, delusory, dereistic, deviant,
deviational, deviative, dishonest, disingenuous, distorted,
dreamlike, dreamy, dubious, elusive, empty, errant, erring,
erroneous, evasive, fake, fallacious, false, fantastic, faultful,
faulty, fishy, flawed, fraudulent, hallucinatory, heretical,
heterodox, hollow, illogical, illusional, illusionary, illusive,
illusory, imaginary, insincere, jesuitic, misleading, not right,
not true, off, off the track, ostensible, out, overrefined,
oversubtle, peccant, perverse, perverted, phantasmagoric,
phantasmal, phantom, philosophistic, plausible, pseudo,
questionable, seeming, self-contradictory, self-deceptive,
self-deluding, shifty, slippery, sophistic, sophistical, specious,
spectral, spurious, straying, supposititious, trickish, tricksy,
tricky, unactual, unfactual, unfounded, unorthodox, unproved,
unreal, unreliable, unsubstantial, untrue, untruthful, visionary,
wide, wrong