Word.ws English Dictionary

sailing under false colors

sailing under false colors is the present participle and gerund of sail under false colors.

Meaning of sail under false colors

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

Questions about sailing under false colors

What is sailing under false colors the present participle and gerund of?
Sailing under false colors is the present participle and gerund of sail under false colors.

Words near sailing under false colors in the dictionary

  1. sailing dinghy
  2. sailing ship
  3. sailing ships
  4. sailing the Red Sea
  5. sailing through
  6. sailing under false colors
  7. sailing vessel
  8. sailing vessels
  9. sailing yacht
  10. sailing yachts
  11. sailing-ice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sailing under false colors (page history and authors); 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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