Word.ws English Dictionary

fauxpen

fauxpen adjective: open, but with restrictions.

Adjective

fauxpen (not comparable)

  1. (uncommon, license etc.) Open, but with restrictions.
    • I fear that some APIs—especially ones that lock us into dependency on commercial intermediaries that may fail—are also a breed of fauxpen.2009 August 26, Doc Searls, “Open vs. Fauxpen”, in Linux Journal
    • As a university we have for the most part stayed away from organizations and efforts that we perceive as “fauxpen” or engaging in “open washing”.2016, Patrick Blessinger, TJ Bliss, editors, Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education, Open Book Publishers, →ISBN

Origin of fauxpen

Blend of faux + open.

Words formed from fauxpen

  • fauxpeness

Questions about fauxpen

What does fauxpen mean?
Fauxpen means open, but with restrictions.
What part of speech is fauxpen?
Fauxpen is an adjective.

Words near fauxpen in the dictionary

  1. fauxminists
  2. fauxmosexual
  3. fauxmosexuality
  4. fauxmosexuals
  5. fauxnetic
  6. fauxpen
  7. fauxpologies
  8. fauxpology
  9. fauxstalgia
  10. fauxstalgic
  11. fauxsurrection

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fauxpen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fauxpen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fauxpen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.