- faithless
- faithless, false, disloyal, traitorous, treacherous, perfidious mean untrue to a person, an institution, or a cause that has a right to expect one's fidelity or allegiance.Faithless applies to a person, utterance, or act that implies a breach of a vow, a pledge, a sworn obligation, or allegiance. Although often used interchangeably with the strongest of the terms here discriminated, then implying a betrayal of a person or cause, it is also capable of implying untrustworthiness, unreliability, or loss or neglect of an opportunity to prove one's devotion or faith{
and hopeless, comfortless, I'll mourn a faithless woman's broken vow— Burns
}{the remnant . . . have been abandoned by their faithless allies— Shelley
}{he abandoned one wife and was faithless to another— J. R. Green
}False differs from faithless in its greater emphasis upon a failure to be true or constant in one's devotion or adherence than upon an actual breach of a vow, pledge, sworn promise, or obligation; however it may, like faithless, carry varying connotations with respect to the gravity or heinousness of that failure{betrayed by a false friend
}{never was Plantagenet false of his word— Marlowe
}{we hope that we can give a reason for the faith that is in us without being false to the strictest obligations of intellectual honesty— Inge
}{the conception of a lordly splendid destiny for the human race, to which we are false when we revert to wars and other atavistic follies— Russell
}Disloyal implies lack of faithfulness in thought, in words, or in actions to one (as a friend, superior, sovereign, party, or country) to whom loyalty is owed{a disloyal subject
}{good party people think such open-mindedness disloyal; but in politics there should be no loyalty except to the public good— Shaw
}{assumed a tone in their correspondence which must have seemed often disloyal, and sometimes positively insulting, to the governor— Motley
}Traitorous implies either actual treason or a serious betrayal of trust or confidence{a traitorous general
}{a traitorous act
}{traitorous breach of confidence
}{by the traitorous connivance of the Bulgarian King and Government, advance parties of the German Air Force . . . were gradually admitted to Bulgaria— Sir Winston Churchill
}Treacherous is of wider application than traitorous; as used of persons it implies readiness, or a disposition, to betray trust or confidence{a treacherous ally
}and as used of things it suggests aptness to lead on to peril or disaster by false or delusive appearances{treacherous sands
}{the treacherous ocean— Shelley
}{up steep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved . . . easily— Macaulay
}Perfidious is a more contemptuous term than treacherous; it implies baseness or vileness as well as an incapacity for faithfulness in the person concerned{perfidious violation of a treaty
}{perfidious dealings
}{Spain . . . to lavish her resources and her blood in furtherance of the designs of a perfidious ally— Southey
}Analogous words: "inconstant, unstable, fickle, capricious: wavering, fluctuating (see SWING vb): Changeable, changefulAntonyms: faithfulContrasted words: loyal, true, staunch, steadfast, resolute, constant (see FAITHFUL)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
