Treachery

How to spell treachery

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce treachery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does treachery mean?

1. nounBetrayal of trust, loyalty, or confidence; deceitful or disloyal conduct.

Treachery in a sentence

• The general was executed for treachery after passing secrets to the enemy.

• Her colleagues never forgave the treachery of leaking the confidential plans to a rival firm.

Where does treachery come from?

Language of origin: French

This word arrived in English around the year 1200 from the Old French trecherie, meaning deceit or cheating, which was built on the verb trichier, 'to cheat or trick'. The deeper origin of trichier is genuinely uncertain, though many scholars connect it to a Vulgar Latin form possibly related to tricari, 'to be evasive or make trouble'. Its closest familiar English relative is the everyday word 'trick', which travelled along a parallel path from the same French stock. Over the centuries the meaning hardened from ordinary cheating into the graver sense of betraying trust or loyalty. The spelling preserves the French shape, which is exactly the trap: the 'ea' sounds like a short 'e', and the soft 'ch' followed by the unstressed '-ery' ending tempts writers toward misspellings like 'treachary' or 'trechery'.

How the word is built

• treach- (from Old French trichier: to cheat, deceive)
• -ery (noun suffix denoting conduct or condition)