hypocrisy
Pluralhypocrisies (some meanings)
- 1The practice of doing what one criticizes in others, or more broadly, behavior that contradicts the beliefs, standards, or virtues one claims or implies one has.
Voters were angered by the hypocrisy of a senator who preached family values while having an affair.
There's a certain hypocrisy in lecturing your kids about screen time while scrolling through your phone at dinner.
Similarinconsistency, duplicity
Note
Here the giveaway is a double standard rather than a mask: the hypocrite condemns in others what they do themselves. The claimed virtue need not be stated out loud, because criticizing a fault implies being free of it, and that is where this use shades into pretended virtue.
- 2Claiming or pretending to have beliefs, standards, virtues, motives, or other qualities that one does not really have.
Critics dismissed the company's sudden concern for the environment as rank hypocrisy.
The minister faced a charge of hypocrisy when his private letters revealed his contempt for the poor he claimed to serve.
Similarinsincerity, duplicity, pretense, sanctimony
Note
Behind the word stands the theater: Greek hupókrisis meant an answer, stage acting, and then pretense, from a verb for answering a fellow actor, playing a part and feigning. A hypocrite is, at root, someone performing virtues for an audience, and the older religious use, a false show of piety, still colors it. Its usual company is moral: rank hypocrisy, a charge of hypocrisy.
- 3A particular hypocritical act, statement, or attitude.
The reporter exposed one hypocrisy after another in the mayor's record.
The memoir lays bare the small hypocrisies of suburban life.
Similarpretense
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English ipocrisie, from Old French ypocrisie, from Late Latin hypocrisis, from Ancient Greek ὑπόκρισις (hupókrisis, "answer, stage acting, pretense"), from ὑποκρίνομαι (hupokrínomai, "to play a part, dissemble, feign"), from ὑπό (hupó, "under") + κρίνω (krínō, "to separate, judge"). It replaced the native Old English līċettung.