Perfidious    (pronounced per-fid-ee-us) adjective


Definition

characterized by perfidy; treacherous; faithless; untrustworthy.

PERFIDY (pronounced puhr-fih-dee) = deliberate breach of faith; betrayal or violation of trust; treachery; deceitfulness.

Main Example

  • Federal prosecutors were popping champagne corks last month after Andy Fastow pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with them. Investigators are now expected to quickly tighten the noose around other members of Enron's perfidious top management.

    Workplace Examples

  • Come on, withdrawing my support for Merle's plan is not an act of faithlessness or perfidy! His proposal has undergone so many revisions, it's now a far cry from what it originally represented.

    Learn to Disarm and Neutralize your Critics and Detractors.

  • Here is my favorite "what if" scenario for students of WWII History: How might things have turned out had Adolf Hitler stuck to his nonaggression pact with Stalin and not ordered that perfidious and self-destructive attack on the Soviet Union in 1941?

    Other Examples

  • a cutthroat workplace riven by backstabbing, undermining, one-upping, and other perfidious behavior

  • Eliot Spitzer helping uncover a culture of perfidy in the world of Wall Street: at many brokerage houses, top analysts routinely and perfidiously recommended stocks that they privately regarded as "junk"

  • Don Carty, then-CEO of American Airlines, losing his job last April because of his perfidy during negotiations with union leaders: while asking workers for huge pay cuts, which he described as necessary to avert bankruptcy, Carty failed to mention the large bonuses and pension protections that had just been approved for executives

  • sometimes, to end long-festering disputes such as that in the Middle East, secret talks between the two warring parties being the only solution, even though it may be seen as perfidious after respective leaders publicly vowed not to have any truck with the other side

    © 2004 V.J. Singal

    This Month's Other Words

    Funereal
    Voluble
    Perfidious
    Disquiet
    Incurious
    Seminal
    Prognosticate
    Denigrate

    Now available on CD-ROM: Past editions of Words of the Month. Click here for more information.
    The Articulate Professional (1995 revised edition) also available. Click here for more information.

    Now get the CD-ROM and the book for only $27. Click here to order.
    *Price includes shipping in US/Canada.