HYPOCRISY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does hypocrisy mean? 

• HYPOCRISY (noun)
  The noun HYPOCRISY has 2 senses:

1. an expression of agreement that is not supported by real conviction

2. insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have

  Familiarity information: HYPOCRISY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HYPOCRISY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An expression of agreement that is not supported by real conviction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

hypocrisy; lip service

Hypernyms ("hypocrisy" is a kind of...):

dissembling; feigning; pretence; pretense (pretending with intention to deceive)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hypocrisy"):

crocodile tears (a hypocritical display of sorrow; false or insincere weeping)

Derivation:

hypocritical (professing feelings or virtues one does not have)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("hypocrisy" is a kind of...):

falseness; hollowness; insincerity (the quality of not being open or truthful; deceitful or hypocritical)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hypocrisy"):

sanctimoniousness; sanctimony (the quality of being hypocritically devout)

fulsomeness; oiliness; oleaginousness; smarminess; unction; unctuousness (smug self-serving earnestness)

Derivation:

hypocritical (professing feelings or virtues one does not have)

 Context examples 

Nay, when I read a letter of his, I cannot help giving him the preference even over Wickham, much as I value the impudence and hypocrisy of my son-in-law.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the cook entered.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

What has it been but a system of hypocrisy and deceit,—espionage, and treachery?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)