Deceptive vs Deceitful, Learn with Mind Trick

Deceptive vs Deceitful
Both of these words means to mislead, but what the main difference is. Let us see more about the words.

Deceitful (Adj.)
Meaning:

• dishonest: making or trying to make someone believe something that is not true
• behaving in dishonest way by telling lies and making people believe thing that are not true

Usages:

1. The report was misleading and deceitful.
2. She had been a deceitful wife.
3. They are manipulative, lying and deceitful people.
4. To be pretentious is to be deceitful, untrustworthy.

Deceptive (Adj.)
Meaning:

• misleading
• likely to make you believe something that is not true

Usages:

1. CBI said that his statements were deceptive.
2. Deceptive marking led to an epidemic.
3. Company shows many deceptive advertising.

According to Dictionary of confusing words:

If something is deceptive it is misleading, not necessarily intentionally: 'The size of the house was deceptive; it was quite spacious inside.' If someone is deceitful he or she deliberately deceives: 'Spending that money without telling me was a deceitful thing to do.'

Difference Between Deceptive and Deceitful:

A person can be deceptive when he or she may lead you to untruth, but unintentionally, like, your friends tell you lie to surprise you at your birthday.

However, a deceitful person tells lie intentionally.

Mind trick:

Deceptive is written like acceptive, adjective of accept. You can learn the word Deceptive with the help of word acceptive that is the adjective of verb 'accept'.

Deceptive and acceptive origin from the same root, i.e, 'capere' that means to take. Ac or ad means to or towards + 'cept' (capere) that means to take: Acceptive means to take.

Same way De means away + 'ceptive'(cept/capere) that means to take: something that takes you away from truth.

And Deceitful has those two alphabets that are also in lie, i.e, "i" and "e"; in this way, with the help of word lie, you can learn memorize that the word deceitful means to lie, but you have to memorize that in deceitful "e" is at first position; "i", at second.

In a nutshell
Deceptive and deceitful both mean to mislead, but first one does unintentionally; second one, intentionally.

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