falsify

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English falsifien,^[2][3][4][5] borrowed from Old French falsifier (“to falsify, counterfeit”),^[2][5][4][6] which the OED and Wiktionary take as French and Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Dictionary.com as Middle French.^[7][1][3][8] The Oxford Dictionary of English allows a direct origin in medieval Latin as well.^[9] The French verb is from Late Latin falsificō (“to make false, corrupt”),^{[7][5][4][10]} which Merriam-Webster Unabridged and the Shorter Oxford call medieval Latin,^[3][10] from falsificus (“making false”),^[7][10][9] from falsus (“false”), the source of false,^[7][5][11] with the ending of -fy.^[7][11] An earlier English verb was simply falsen, from about 1200.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To prove untrue: about 1449, in Pecock's Repressor, "forto falsifie this present..conclusioun".^[7][2]

Semantic evolution

The word came in meaning to prove false, then from 1528 had a legal use, proving a judgment or the like false so as to set it aside.^[7][3] The sense "to make false" follows soon after, in 1502 for altering a document fraudulently,^[7][5] and it spread in the later 16th and 17th centuries: to adulterate (1562–1658), to pervert from a correct rule (1589, in Puttenham), to counterfeit (1601–99), to make a balance untrue (1611, in the King James Bible), and to misrepresent (1630).^[7] The Shorter Oxford also records the verb for breaking a promise and, in fencing, for feinting a blow, both dying out by the late 17th century.^[10] Johnson (1755) gave three senses: to counterfeit, to confute, and to violate a promise, quoting Sidney's "thy faith falsified".^[12] Dialect kept further meanings into the 19th century: in Worcestershire and Wiltshire, to sham illness, and of seeds or young trees, to fail; in Gloucestershire, to give out or become useless.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1449 – to prove false.^[7][2]
• 1502 – to alter a document fraudulently.^[7] Etymonline dates "to make false" to about 1500.^[5]
• 1528 – in law, to prove false so as to set aside.^[7]
• 1562 – to adulterate (obsolete after 1658).^[7]
• 1589 – to pervert from a correct rule, in Puttenham.^[7]
• 1601 – to counterfeit (obsolete after 1699).^[7]
• 1611 – to make a balance or standard untrue.^[7]
• 1630 – to misrepresent, to give a false account of.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To change a record or document so that it deceives: The clerk falsified the invoices to hide the loss.^[6][3][7]
2. To prove false; to disprove: Later measurements falsified the theory.^[6][3][7]
3. To give a false account of; to misrepresent.^[7][10]
4. (law) To prove false so as to avoid or correct a judgment.^[3][7]
5. To counterfeit, forge or adulterate.^[3][12]
6. (obsolete, mid 16th–late 17th century) To break a promise.^[10][12]

Word family

• falsification
• falsifier
• falsifiability
• falsifiable

Related words

• false
• falsehood
• falsity

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)