falsify

From French falsifier, from Late Latin falsificāre, present active infinitive of falsificō (“make false, corrupt, counterfeit, falsify”), from Latin falsificus, from falsus (“false”), corresponding to false +‎ -ify.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɒlsɪfaɪ/

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falsify (third-person singular simple present falsifies, present participle falsifying, simple past and past participle falsified)

1. (transitive) To alter so as to make false; to make incorrect.

   to falsify a record or document

   • Edmund Spenser

     The Irish bards use to forge and falsify everything as they list, to please or displease any man.

2. (transitive) To misrepresent.
3. (transitive) To prove to be false.
   • Shakespeare

     By how much better than my word I am, / By so much shall I falsify men's hope.

   • Addison

     Jews and Pagans united all their endeavors, under Julian the apostate, to baffle and falsify the prediction.

4. (transitive) To counterfeit; to forge.

   to falsify coin

5. (transitive, finance) To show, in accounting, (an item of charge inserted in an account) to be wrong.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Story to this entry?)

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Daniell to this entry?)

6. (transitive, obsolete) To baffle or escape.
   • Samuel Butler

     For disputants (as swordsmen use to fence / With blunted foyles) engage with blunted sense; / And as th' are wont to falsify a blow, / Use nothing else to pass upon a foe […]

7. (transitive, obsolete) To violate; to break by falsehood.

   to falsify one's faith or word

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Philip Sidney to this entry?)

• falsify in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• falsify in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.