deceptive

Etymology

From Middle French déceptif, from Latin dēceptīvus, from dēcipiō (“I deceive”).

adj

1. Likely or attempting to deceive.
   deceptive practices
   Appearances can be deceptive.
   […] others declare that no Creature can be made or transmuted into a better or worse, or transformed into another species […] and Martinus Delrio the Jesuit accounts this degeneration of Man into a Beast to be an illusion, deceptive and repugnant to Nature; 1653, John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis, London: William Hunt, Scene24, page 521
   […] at the opening of the campaign, the French, after various deceptive attempts on different places, suddenly invested Tournay. 1789, Frederick the Great, translated by Thomas Holcroft, The History of My Own Times, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, Part 1, Chapter 12, p. 163
   1846, Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, London: John W. Parker, 2nd ed., 1847, Preliminary Essay, Chapter 2, p. 10, language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes
   […] it is characteristic of TB that many of its symptoms are deceptive—liveliness that comes from enervation, rosy cheeks that look like a sign of health but come from fever—and an upsurge of vitality may be a sign of approaching death. 1978, Susan Sontag, chapter 2, in Illness as Metaphor, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 13