falser

Pluralfalsers

1. 1
   adjective

   Comparative of false.

   Each story he told grew falser as the night wore on.

   No claim in the pamphlet was falser than the one about the harvest.

   Note

   Short adjectives like false usually compare with -er, and this one drops its final e to make falser. The phrase more false sits beside it as an alternative. The comparative suits the human senses best, as in a falser friend or a falser vow. In Boolean logic, where a value is simply true or false, it does not apply. The same spelling once also named a person, in the obsolete word for a deceiver.

2. 2
   nounobsolete

   A person who deceives others.

   The court denounced him as a falser who had betrayed his lord.

   of such falsers friendship bene fayne

   1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “Maye. Ægloga Quinta.”

   Note

   Here the word names a person rather than a degree. Edmund Spenser, writing as Immeritô in The Shepheardes Calender (1579), warns "of such falsers friendship bene fayne." The noun is obsolete, so in modern writing it belongs only to deliberate archaism. Its plural is falsers. Elsewhere, deceiver is the safe choice, because a modern reader will hear falser as the comparative of false.

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