make-believe

Speech parts

1. make-believe - Noun

2. make-believe - Adjective

3. make-believe - Verb

4. make-believe - Adjective Satellite

Meaning

A feigning to believe, as in the play of children; a mere pretense; a fiction; an invention.

Feigned; insincere.

Source: Webster's dictionary

Alternative names

make believe

Synonyms

pretend act fantasy fake simulate disguise counterfeit pretense sham pretence feign fantasize play-act fantasia chimera
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Antonyms

amen real world case real true bona fide
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Hypernyms

play act represent imaging imagination simulation

Hyponyms

go through the motions

Examples

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part. William Hazlitt

To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe. Louis-Ferdinand Céline

There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off. Thomas Henry Huxley

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Henry David Thoreau

As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood. Jim Henson

There is no make-believe about heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter majesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat back the lives that have been tossed forth from the womb only to fail. Joseph Campbell

Close letter words and terms

make-and-break make-before-break make-belief make-believe life make-believe world make-believing