dissemble

in a sentence

It must have been a self-preserving instinct which had made us keep the thing to ourselves, for we'd no active feeling of danger — I had so little, in fact, that when Uncle Axel found me sitting behind a rick chatting apparently to myself, I made very little effort to dissemble.  (source) John Wyndham, The Chrysalids, 1955

To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.  (source) George Orwell, 1984, 1949

She still hated the Yankees with as fierce a hate as on the day when they tried to burn Tara, but she could dissemble that hate.  (source) Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 1936

"In—in the Bowery; at a confectioner's," said Mrs. Penniman, who had a general idea that she ought to dissemble a little.  (source) Henry James, Washington Square, 1880

He was not good at dissembling and he was very well understood.  (source) John Steinbeck, The Pearl, 1947

I dissembled.†  (source) Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief, 1996

Though I'd tried to stay away from them as much as I could (as skilled a dissembler as I was, I could barely be civil to him; everything about him, his pinkish skin, his nervous laugh, the hair sprouting out the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, made me want to jump on him and knock his horsey English teeth out; and wouldn't that be a surprise, I thought grimly, glaring at him across the table, if old antique-dealing Specs hauled off and busted his eggs for him?) still, as hard as I'd tried, I hadn't been able to stay away from Pippa, I'd hovered obtrusively and hated myself for it, so painfully excited had I been by her nearness: her bare feet at breakfast, bare legs, her voice.†  (source) Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2013

The Spicers are dissemblers and braggarts and the Brotherhood is full of pirates.†  (source) George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings, 1999

26:24 He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit within him; 26:25 When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart.†  (source) The Bible, Old Testament, 1611

Is our whole dissembly appeared?†  (source) William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1599

To make me a wicked wight," quoth she, "Lo, he dissimuleth* here in audience; *dissembles He stareth and woodeth* in his advertence."†  (source) Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 1350

Ah, but his adversary was not tongue-tied, either; he knew how to disrupt this angelic hallelujah with nasty, brilliant protests, declaring himself a partisan of life and its conservation and an opponent of the spirit of sedition lurking beneath such seraphic dissemblance.†  (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

But answer undissembling; tell me true; Who art thou?†  (source) Homer, The Odyssey, -850 B.C.