self-deceiving

[ self-di-see-ving, self- ]

adjective

1. subject to self-deception; tending to deceive or fool oneself:

   a self-deceiving person.

2. used in deceiving oneself, especially in justifying a false belief, a morally reprehensible act, or the like:

   a self-deceiving argument.

Word History and Origins

Origin of self-deceiving¹

First recorded in 1605–15

Example Sentences

A movie destined for a cult following and subsequent midnight showings, “Divinity” does commit the sin of placing style over substance, but there’s enough of the latter to keep one’s mind spinning along with it, even if it’s all a jumble: biblical nods to brotherly disputes, the self-deceiving dangers of vanity, the notion of reproduction as humanity’s holy power.

From Los Angeles Times

Penn captures the beating heart of an inveterate explorer, at its most self-deceiving but also at its bravest and boldest.

From Washington Post

“If you think of benevolent deception and optimistic self-deception not as vice and weakness, but as adaptive responses to difficult circumstances,” Shankar Vedantam writes in his powerful new book, “Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain,” “it is not hard to imagine that many of us — confronted by immense pain — might choose the hope of lies over the despair of truth.”

From Washington Post

The self-deceiving nature of this state was further revealed last weekend, when some internal barometer sent the entire system offline and nothing I used to distract myself was effective anymore.

From Salon

And almost everyone outside a dishonest, self-deceiving circle of Republican stooges and Trump toadies knows it.

From The Guardian