Word.ws English Dictionary

pious fraud

pious fraud noun: an act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.

Noun

pious fraud (countable and uncountable, plural pious frauds)

  1. An act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.
    • White lies are verbal cases of pious fraud.
  2. A person involved in such a fraud.

Forms of pious fraud

pluralpious frauds

Origin of pious fraud

Calque of Latin pia fraus.

Questions about pious fraud

What does pious fraud mean?
Pious fraud means an act of innocent deceit, technically using the methods of a fraudster but for an honest, honorable purpose.
What part of speech is pious fraud?
Pious fraud is a noun.
What is the plural of pious fraud?
The plural of pious fraud is pious frauds.

Words near pious fraud in the dictionary

  1. Piotta
  2. pioury
  3. pious
  4. pious fiction
  5. pious fictions
  6. pious fraud
  7. pious frauds
  8. piously
  9. piousness
  10. piousnesses
  11. pip

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pious fraud (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.

Last updated:

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