Word of the Day
: December 20, 2011subterfuge
playWhat It Means
1 : deception by artifice or stratagem in order to conceal, escape, or evade
2 : a deceptive device or stratagem
subterfuge in Context
They obtained the documents through subterfuge.
"Staring into a series of mirrors, Philip Fletcher's Iago watches as his reflections come to life, in the form of two of Synetic's other first-rank actor-dancers, Alex Mills and Irina Tsikurishvili. Giving Iago an omnipresent shape helps an audience imagine the breathtaking scope of his subterfuge as he creates the circumstances in which a man might be falsely convinced that a loyal wife is straying." -- From a review by Peter Marks in The Washington Post, November 4, 2011
Did You Know?
Though "subterfuge" is a synonym of "deception," "fraud," "double-dealing," and "trickery," there’s nothing tricky about the word’s etymology. We borrowed the word and meaning from Late Latin "subterfugium." That word contains the Latin prefix "subter-," meaning "secretly," which derives from the adverb "subter," meaning "underneath." The "-fuge" portion comes from the Latin verb "fugere," which means "to flee" and which is also the source of words such as "fugitive" and "refuge," among others.
Word Family Quiz
What adjective descends from "fugere" and means "acting in a direction away from a center"? The answer is ...
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