Wiktionary

impostor

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Middle French imposteur, respelled in the Latin manner; ultimately from Latin impositor, agent form of Latin imponere (“to impose”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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Examples (term referenced in unusual person)

(In these examples, italicized terms refer to the same thing.)

  • The authors believe that our work speaks for itself.
  • Dad is coming home to fetch my tools.

impostor (plural impostors)

  1. Someone who attempts to deceive by using an assumed name or identity.
    • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Consent”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 153:
      "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."
    • 1953 November, 'Erca', “Ticket Frauds in the East”, in Railway Magazine, page 778:
      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.
    • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
      “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.”
  2. (computer graphics) A sprite or animation integrated into a three-dimensional scene to look like part of the 3D world.
    Coordinate term: billboard
  3. (linguistics) A term referenced in an unusual grammatical person.
    • 2014, Daniel Kaufman, “The Syntax of Indonesian Imposters”, in Chris Collins, editor, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Imposters and Pronominal Agreement, →ISBN, page 105:
      Interestingly, Wang shows that Chinese allows the appearance of an indexical pronoun alongside the imposter, as in (31).
    • 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:
      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.

Usage notes

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impostor is the traditional spelling; imposter was relatively rare, but has become almost as common as impostor since 2000.[1]

Synonyms

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Hyponyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Catalan

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Late Latin impostōrem.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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impostor m (plural impostors, feminine impostora)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)

Further reading

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Galician

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Etymology

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From Late Latin impostor.

Noun

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impostor m (plural impostores, feminine impostora, feminine plural impostoras)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)

Further reading

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Latin

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Etymology

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From earlier impositor, agent noun of impōnō.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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impostor m (genitive impostōris); third declension

  1. (Late Latin) impostor

Declension

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Third-declension noun.

singular plural
nominative impostor impostōrēs
genitive impostōris impostōrum
dative impostōrī impostōribus
accusative impostōrem impostōrēs
ablative impostōre impostōribus
vocative impostor impostōrēs

Descendants

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References

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Polish

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Learned borrowing from Late Latin impostor. Doublet of imposter.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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impostor m pers

  1. (dated) impostor (someone who uses a false identity)
    Hypernym: oszust

Declension

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Declension of impostor
singular plural
nominative impostor impostorzy/impostory (deprecative)
genitive impostora impostorów
dative impostorowi impostorom
accusative impostora impostorów
instrumental impostorem impostorami
locative impostorze impostorach
vocative impostorze impostorzy

Further reading

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Portuguese

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Late Latin impostōrem.

Pronunciation

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  • Hyphenation: im‧pos‧tor

Noun

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impostor m (plural impostores, feminine impostora, feminine plural impostoras)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)
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Further reading

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Romanian

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French imposteur.

Noun

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impostor m (plural impostori)

  1. impostor

Declension

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singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative-accusative impostor impostorul impostori impostorii
genitive-dative impostor impostorului impostori impostorilor
vocative impostorule impostorilor

Spanish

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Late Latin impostor. Cognate with English impostor.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /imposˈtoɾ/ [ĩm.posˈt̪oɾ]
  • Rhymes: -oɾ
  • Syllabification: im‧pos‧tor

Noun

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impostor m (plural impostores, feminine impostora, feminine plural impostoras)

  1. impostor (someone who uses a false identity)
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Further reading

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