improbity

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Lack of probity

Nouns

1. improbity; dishonesty, dishonor; disgrace, disrepute; fraud, deception; lying, falsehood; bad faith, infidelity, inconstancy, faithlessness, Judas kiss, betrayal; breach of promise, trust, or faith; renegation, renegadism, disloyalty, [high] treason; Watergate; apostasy (see changeableness). Slang, Irangate. See guilt, illegality, wrong.

2. (dishonest actions) villainy, baseness, abjection, debasement, [moral] turpitude, laxity; perfidy, perfidiousness, treachery, duplicity, double-dealing; knavery, roguery, rascality, foul play; trickery, venality; collaboration; nepotism, corruption, simony, barratry, graft, jobbery, malfeasance; night of the long knives. Slang, dirty pool.

3. vice, depravity, looseness, profligacy. See impurity.

4. knave (see evildoer); double-crosser, betrayer, informer; collaborator, Quisling; fair-weather friend. Informal, two-timer. Slang, rat, [rat]fink.

See information.

Verbs

1. play false; forswear, break one's word, faith, or promise, go back on one's word; betray, double-cross, stab in the back, sell out, sell down the river, sell the pass; cuckold, jilt, cheat on, carry on; lie (see falsehood); live by one's wits; misrepresent; hit below the belt. Informal, two-time. Slang, rat (on), fink (on), blow the whistle (on), yard (on), chippy (on).

2. sin (see badness).

Adjectives

1. dishonest, dishonorable, unscrupulous, fly-by-night; fraudulent (see deception); knavish, disgraceful, unconscionable; disreputable (see disrepute); wicked, sinful, vicious, criminal.

2. false-hearted, two-faced; crooked, insidious, Machiavellian, dark, slippery; perfidious, treacherous, underhand[ed], perjured; infamous, arrant, foul, base, abject, vile, ignominious, blackguard; corrupt, venal; recreant, inglorious, discreditable, improper; faithless, false, unfaithful, disloyal; treacherous, renegade; untrustworthy, unreliable, undependable, trustless; lost to shame, dead to honor.

Adverbs — dishonestly, like a thief in the night, underhandedly, by fair means or foul, by hook or crook.

Phrases — there is nothing constant but inconstancy; fear the Greeks bearing gifts.

Quotations — Faith unfaithful kept him falsely true (Lord Tennyson), We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal (Tennessee Williams), This was the most unkindest cut of all (Shakespeare), Each man kills the thing he loves (Oscar Wilde).

Antonyms, see probity.

II

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. Departure from what is legally, ethically, and morally correct: corruption, corruptness, dishonesty. Informal: crookedness. See HONEST. 2. Lack of integrity: dishonesty. See HONEST.