Word.ws English Dictionary

sail under false colors

sail under false colors verb: to deceive or intentionally mystify.

Verb

sail under false colors (third-person singular simple present sails under false colors, present participle sailing under false colors, simple past and past participle sailed under false colors)

  1. (idiomatic, obsolete) To deceive or intentionally mystify.
    • They were all not exactly sailing under false colours, but deceiving themselves as to their motives—and one another, to a lesser degree, by their actions.1869, Annie Thomas, “Miss Vargrave Nearly Lands a Fish”, in False Colours. […], volume II, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 251

Forms of sail under false colors

third-person singular presentsails under false colors
present participlesailing under false colors
past participlesailed under false colors
pastsailed under false colors

Questions about sail under false colors

What does sail under false colors mean?
Sail under false colors means to deceive or intentionally mystify.
What part of speech is sail under false colors?
Sail under false colors is a verb.
What is the past tense of sail under false colors?
The past tense of sail under false colors is sailed under false colors.

Words near sail under false colors in the dictionary

  1. sail sign
  2. sail signs
  3. sail the high seas
  4. sail the Red Sea
  5. sail through
  6. sail under false colors
  7. sail vault
  8. sail vaults
  9. sail wagon
  10. sail wagons
  11. sail'd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sail under false colors (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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