perfidious

From Latin perfidiōsus (“treacherous”), from perfidia.

• (US) IPA^(key): /pɚˈfɪdi.əs/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /pəˈfɪdi.əs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪdiəs

perfidious (comparative more perfidious, superlative most perfidious)

1. Of, pertaining to, or representing perfidy; disloyal to what should command one's fidelity or allegiance.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     TRINCULO (speaking about Caliban): By this light, a most perfidious and drunken / monster: when his god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.

   • 1851, Oliver Goldsmith, “ch. 26”, in William C. Taylor, editor, Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome:

     The perfidious Ricimer soon became dissatisfied with Anthe'mius, and raised the standard of revolt.

   • 1905, Andrew Lang, “ch. 14”, in John Knox and the Reformation:

     he knew Huntly for the ambitious traitor he was, a man peculiarly perfidious and self-seeking.

   • 2005 June 21, “Art: The Velocipede of Modernism”, in Time‎, archived from the original on 12 November 2011:

     When the Nazis branded Feininger a "degenerate artist" in 1937, he left 54 paintings for safekeeping with a Bauhaus friend named Hermann Klumpp. After the war, and for the rest of Feininger's life, the perfidious Klumpp refused to give them back.

   • 2015 August 28, John Dugdale, “Mario Vargas Llosa, Hola! and the shallow reading of a review”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     Enraged, the 2010 Nobel literature laureate thundered that he was “flabbergasted to learn that this kind of gossip can find its way into a respectable publication such as the Book Review” - a “slanderous and perfidious” instance of the convergence of posh and pop that his book inveighs against.

• (disloyal): disloyal, traitorous, treacherous, unfaithful

• perfidy