impostor

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English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle French imposteur.

Pronunciation

Noun

Examples (term referenced in unusual person)

(In these examples, italicized terms refer to the same thing.)

  • The authors believe that our work speaks for itself.
  • Dad is coming home to fetch my tools.

impostor (plural impostors)

  1. Someone who attempts to deceive by using an assumed name or identity.
    • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Consent”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. , volume I, London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC, page 153:
      "It were dishonour in me to yield. I will not play the part of an impostor, whom my uncle must despise even while he screens. No; these estates are his right: let him take them; I will not buy them with his daughter's hand."
    • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
      “I said he had a criminal face.” “He can't help his face.” “He can help being a crook and an impostor. Calls himself a butler, does he? The police could shake that story. He's no more a butler than I am.”
  2. (computer graphics) A sprite or animation integrated into a three-dimensional scene, but not based on an actual 3D model.
  3. (linguistics) A term referenced in an unusual grammatical person.
    • 2014, Daniel Kaufman, “The Syntax of Indonesian Imposters”, in Chris Collins, editor, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Imposters and Pronominal Agreement, →ISBN, page 105:
      Interestingly, Wang shows that Chinese allows the appearance of an indexical pronoun alongside the imposter, as in (31).
    • 2018, Angela Xiaoxue He, Rhiannon Luyster, Sudha Arunachalam, “Personal pronoun usage in maternal input to infants at high vs. low risk for autism spectrum disorder”, in First Language, volume 38, number 5, →DOI:
      One possibility is that mothers of HR [higher-risk] infants frequently use non-pronoun forms in place of pronouns, as in the impostor uses noted above.

Usage notes

impostor is the traditional spelling; imposter was relatively rare, but has become almost as common as impostor since 2000.

Synonyms

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Translations

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin impostōrem.

Pronunciation

Noun

impostor m (plural impostors, feminine impostora)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)

Further reading

Galician

Etymology

From Late Latin impostor.

Noun

impostor m (plural impostores, feminine impostora, feminine plural impostoras)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)

Further reading

Latin

Etymology

From earlier impositor, agent noun of impōnō.

Pronunciation

Noun

impostor m (genitive impostōris); third declension

  1. (Late Latin) impostor

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Case Singular Plural
Nominative impostor impostōrēs
Genitive impostōris impostōrum
Dative impostōrī impostōribus
Accusative impostōrem impostōrēs
Ablative impostōre impostōribus
Vocative impostor impostōrēs

Descendants

References

Polish

Alternative forms

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin impostor. Doublet of imposter.

Pronunciation

Noun

impostor m pers

  1. (dated) impostor (someone who uses a false identity)
    Hypernym: oszust

Declension

Declension of impostor
singular plural
nominative impostor impostorzy/impostory (deprecative)
genitive impostora impostorów
dative impostorowi impostorom
accusative impostora impostorów
instrumental impostorem impostorami
locative impostorze impostorach
vocative impostorze impostorzy

Further reading

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin impostōrem.

Pronunciation

 
 

  • Hyphenation: im‧pos‧tor

Noun

impostor m (plural impostores, feminine impostora, feminine plural impostoras)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)

Related terms

Further reading

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French imposteur.

Noun

impostor m (plural impostori)

  1. impostor

Declension

Declension of impostor
singular plural
indefinite articulation definite articulation indefinite articulation definite articulation
nominative/accusative (un) impostor impostorul (niște) impostori impostorii
genitive/dative (unui) impostor impostorului (unor) impostori impostorilor
vocative impostorule impostorilor

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin impostor. Cognate with English impostor.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /imposˈtoɾ/
  • Rhymes: -oɾ
  • Syllabification: im‧pos‧tor

Noun

impostor m (plural impostores, feminine impostora, feminine plural impostoras)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)

Related terms

Further reading

Wikious
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