impostor
nounUK /ɪmˈpɒstə/ · US /ɪmˈpɑstɚ/
Etymology Borrowed from Middle French imposteur, respelled in the Latin manner; ultimately from Latin impositor, agent form of Latin imponere (“to impose”).
1
Someone who attempts to deceive by using an assumed name or identity.
- "It were dishonour in me to yield. I will not play the part of an impostor, whom my uncle must despise even while he screens. No; these estates are his right: let him take them; I will not buy them with his daughter's hand."1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Consent”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 153:
- Then again these figures take no account of the thousands of beggars who travel free in India. Many of these are religious "Sadhus", dressed often in nothing but a loin-cloth, or even less, and their bodies smeared with ashes. A large number of these men are nothing but impostors, but the Hindu railway staff usually are afraid to interfere with them.1953 November, 'Erca', “Ticket Frauds in the East”, in Railway Magazine, page 778:
1 more example
- “I said he had a criminal face.” “He can't help his face.” “He can help being a crook and an impostor. Calls himself a butler, does he? The police could shake that story. He's no more a butler than I am.”1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
2
Computer graphics, Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A sprite or animation integrated into a three-dimensional scene to look like part of the 3D world.
3
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences A term referenced in an unusual grammatical person.
- Interestingly, Wang shows that Chinese allows the appearance of an indexical pronoun alongside the imposter, as in (31).2014, Daniel Kaufman, “The Syntax of Indonesian Imposters”, in Chris Collins, editor, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Imposters and Pronominal Agreement, →ISBN, page 105:
- One possibility is that mothers of HR [higher-risk] infants frequently use non-pronoun forms in place of pronouns, as in the impostor uses noted above.2018, Angela Xiaoxue He, Rhiannon Luyster, Sudha Arunachalam, “Personal pronoun usage in maternal input to infants at high vs. low risk for autism spectrum disorder”, in First Language, volume 38, number 5, →DOI:
- Synonyms
- impersonator
- Derived terms
- imposterous, impostorism, impostor phenomenon, impostorship, impostor syndrome, impostress, impostrix, supernova impostor
- Hyponyms
- quack