impostor

Etymology

It is borrowed from French imposteur, a French word of the 16th century,^[2][3][4][5] from Late Latin impostor (“a deceiver”).^[3][5][6][2] The OED compares Spanish impostor, Portuguese impostor and Italian impostore.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged names both Middle French and Late Latin as sources.^[7] Barnhart instead has the word develop from imposture through confusion with Middle French imposteur.^[8] The OED also says that the new word was at first apparently confused with the older noun, and that its ending was then altered to -er and -or, of which the latter, agreeing with the Latin form, survived.^[2] The Latin noun is an agent noun from impōnō (“to place upon, impose upon, deceive”).^[2][3] Dictionaries explain its form in different ways: Hoad, Ayto and the Oxford Dictionary of English call it a contraction of impositor,^[5][6][9] while Etymonline and Klein derive it from impostus, a contracted or collateral form of the participle impositus.^[3][10] The American Heritage Dictionary glosses the Latin noun as one who assigns a name.^[4] The verb is formed from in- (“into, on, upon”), from Proto-Indo-European *en (“in”), and pōnō (“to put, place”).^[3] According to Ayto, the same verb also gave impose and impost.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A deceiver, swindler or cheat: 1586, in a letter of King James VI,^[2] where Barnhart gives the spelling impostur.^[8] Etymonline dates the word to the 1580s,^[3] while Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1564 as its first known use.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the word carries the "deceive" sense of the Latin verb, so that an impostor is literally someone who imposes on others.^[6] The narrower sense of a person who assumes a false name or character appears in 1624, in Captain Smith's "Generall Historie of Virginia",^[8][3] and the OED says this is now the main sense.^[2] Johnson (1755) already defined the word as one who cheats by a fictitious character, and quoted South on the devil as "that grand impostor".^[11] Feminine forms were tried in the 17th century: Bacon used impostress in the 1610s, and Fuller impostrix in the 1650s.^[3]

Timeline

• 1586 – a deceiver or swindler, spelled impostur.^[2][8]
• 1610s – impostress, a female impostor, in Bacon.^[3]
• 1624 – a person who assumes a false name or character.^[8][3]
• 1650s – impostrix, a female impostor, in Fuller.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who assumes a false identity, character or title in order to deceive: The man in the pilot's uniform turned out to be an impostor.^[12][7][2]
2. A person who practises imposture; a deceiver, swindler or charlatan.^{[7][12][2][13]}

Related words

• impose
• impost
• imposture
• imposition

Usage notes

The spelling imposter is recorded as a variant by Merriam-Webster Unabridged, Collins and the Shorter Oxford.^[7][12][13]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press