Definition of "imposture" []

• The act or instance of engaging in deception under an assumed name or identity. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It could not be at the fact that, for all your hollow proclamations of the auteur's commitment to the work alone, this imposture is actually an artifical bolstering of a self-esteem that's actually quite frail and flimsy."
• ""I am sorry, sir," replied that gentleman, "that you should think it necessary to apply the word imposture to any 'proceeding of mine."
• "But Soa knew well enough that this was but the beginning of the struggle, and that, though it might be comparatively easy for Juanna and Otter to enter the city, and impose themselves upon its superstition-haunted people as the incarnations of their fabled gods, the maintenance of the imposture was a very different matter."