IMPOSTOR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does impostor mean? 

• IMPOSTOR (noun)
  The noun IMPOSTOR has 1 sense:

1. a person who makes deceitful pretenses

  Familiarity information: IMPOSTOR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPOSTOR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who makes deceitful pretenses

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

fake; faker; fraud; imposter; impostor; pretender; pseud; pseudo; role player; sham; shammer

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

beguiler; cheat; cheater; deceiver; slicker; trickster (someone who leads you to believe something that is not true)

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

name dropper (someone who pretends that famous people are his/her friends)

ringer (a contestant entered in a competition under false pretenses)

 Context examples 

"Surely, colonel," cried Lady Ingram, "you would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!"

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But all of my own sex—especially one impostor, three or four years my elder, with a red whisker, on which he established an amount of presumption not to be endured—were my mortal foes.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"But I do think hardly of you," I said; and I'll tell you why—not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no 'brass' and no house.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)