Fallacy

How to spell fallacy

7 letters · 3 syllables

The most common mistake is falacy. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

falacy fallacy

What people typed instead

• falacy3 people

How to pronounce fallacy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fallacy mean?

1. nounA mistaken belief or a flaw in reasoning, especially one that appears convincing but does not hold up.

Fallacy in a sentence

• The report exposed the fallacy behind the company's growth projections.

• Believing that a higher price always means better quality is a common fallacy.

Where does fallacy come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin fallacia, meaning 'deceit' or 'trickery', which was built on the adjective fallax, 'deceptive', from the verb fallere, 'to deceive or to cause to stumble'. The literal sense of fallere centred on tripping someone up, and that image of a misleading slip survives in the modern meaning of a belief that trips up the reasoning. English took the word in during the late 1400s and 1500s, partly through Old French and partly straight from Latin scholarly writing. The very same fallere root sits inside the everyday word 'fail' and inside 'false', which is why ideas of error and deception cluster around all three. For spelling, it helps to remember the doubled l of fallere and that the ending is the noun suffix -acy, not the -asy or -acey a writer might guess.

How the word is built

• fall- (from Latin fallere: to deceive)
• -acy (noun suffix forming a state or quality)