False

How to spell false

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce false

What does false mean?

1. adjectiveNot true, not genuine, or not in accordance with the facts.

False in a sentence

• The salesman gave a false account of the car's history.

• The alarm went off because of a false reading from the sensor.

Where does false come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin falsus, meaning 'deceptive', 'feigned', or 'untrue', which was the past participle of the verb fallere, meaning 'to deceive' or 'to disappoint'. Old English borrowed the word early as fals, used chiefly of forgery and counterfeit coin, and the sense was then reinforced by Old French fals or faus during the Middle Ages. The same fallere root still underlies a surprising family of English words, including 'fail', 'fault', 'fallacy', and 'fallible', all of which carry the idea of falling short or being misleading. Over time false broadened from describing counterfeit objects to describing anything untrue, mistaken, or disloyal. The spelling keeps the Latin -se ending, so the word ends in a soft -se rather than the -ce that some writers expect.

How the word is built

• fals- (from Latin falsus: deceptive, untrue)
• -e