dissimulate

English

Etymology

From Latin dissimulare; compare obsolete dissimule (“to conceal, disguise”), from Old French dissimuler, ultimately from the same Latin root.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dɪˈsɪmjʊˌleɪt/, /-jə-/

Verb

dissimulate (third-person singular simple present dissimulates, present participle dissimulating, simple past and past participle dissimulated)

1. (intransitive) To practise deception by concealment or omission, or by feigning a false appearance.
   • 1913, Booth Tarkington, chapter 13, in The Flirt, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 212:

     But now, as he paced alone in his apartment, now that he was not upon exhibition, now when there was no eye to behold him, and there was no reason to dissimulate or veil a single thought or feeling, his look was anything but open; the last trace of frankness disappeared; the muscles at mouth and eyes shifted; lines and planes intermingled and altered subtly; there was a moment of misty transformation – and the face of another man emerged. It was the face of a man uninstructed in mercy; it was a shrewd and planning face: alert, resourceful, elaborately perceptive, and flawlessly hard.

2. (transitive) To disguise or hide by adopting a false appearance.
   • 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter III, in Middlemarch , volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 38:

     [P]ublic feeling required the meagreness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows.

3. (transitive, rare) To connive at; to wink at; to pretend not to notice.
   • 1533 John Bourchier (Lord Berners), The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius 9:

     That al thyng be forgiven to theim that be olde and broken, and to theim that be yonge and lusty to dissimulate for a time, and nothyng to be forgiuen to very yong children.

Derived terms

• dissimulation

Related terms

Translations

Adjective

dissimulate (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Feigning; simulating; pretending.
   • c. 1480, Robert Henryson, The Cock and the Fox:

     This fenyeit foxe, fals and dissimulate,
     Maid to this cok ane cavillatioun […]

References

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “dissimulate”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Italian

Etymology 1

Verb

dissimulate

1. inflection of dissimulare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

Participle

dissimulate f pl

1. feminine plural of dissimulato

Latin

Verb

dissimulāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of dissimulō