SHAM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Sham

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/ʃæm/ Listen

noun

Sham n.

That which deceives expectation; any trick, fraud, or device that deludes and disappoints; a make-believe; delusion; imposture; humbug. "A mere sham." "Believe who will the solemn sham, not I."

A false front, or removable ornamental covering.

Pillow sham, a covering to be laid on a pillow.

verb

Sham v. t. (past & past part. shammed; pres. part. shamming)

To trick; to cheat; to deceive or delude with false pretenses. "Fooled and shammed into a conviction."

To obtrude by fraud or imposition. (R.) "We must have a care that we do not... sham fallacies upon the world for current reason."

To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign.

To sham Abram or To sham Abraham, to feign sickness; to malinger. Hence a malingerer is called, in sailors' cant, Sham Abram, or Sham Abraham.

Sham v. i. To make false pretenses; to deceive; to feign; to impose. "Wondering... whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, or were only shamming."

adjective

Sham adj. False; counterfeit; pretended; feigned; unreal; as, a sham fight. "They scorned the sham independence proffered to them by the Athenians."

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Etymology of 'Sham'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books

... health. But after all we ought not to forget that similar dangers surround our inner culture and our spiritual life, and that an intellectual underworld threatens our time, which demands a no less rigorous fight until its vice is wiped out. The vice of the social underworld gives a sham satisfaction to the human desire for sensual life; the vice of the intellectual underworld gives the same sham fulfilment to the human longing for knowledge and for truth. The infectious germs which it spreads ...

— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... a fool, or a bore, a silly little idiot or a fisher of men, a social sham who prattled of duchesses or a strenuous feminine politician who babbled of votes; a Christian Scientist bent on converting, an adventuress without adventures (the worst kind), a mind-healer or a body-snatcher, ...

— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... them like sheep; but this future time was always receding; and it is probable that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years, his superb army would never have seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields near Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected were destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and inventive ...

— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... he had said nothing because he wished to reserve for himself the satisfaction of pursuing the assassins and sham ghosts of the Chartreuse when the time came. He now arrived with full power to put that design into execution, firmly resolved not to return to the First Consul until it was accomplished. Besides, it was ...

— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... Cardan's achievements in Medicine and Mathematics. But in appraising the qualifications of Naude to act as a judge in this case, it will be necessary to bear in mind the fact that he was in his day a leading exponent of liberal opinions, the author of a treatise exposing the mummeries and sham mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and of an "Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupconnez de Magie," and a disbeliever in supernatural manifestations of every kind. With a mind thus attuned it is no matter of surprise that Naude should have been led to speak somewhat severely when called ...

— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

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