| Library / English Dictionary |
TRAITOR
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A person who says one thing and does another
Synonyms:
betrayer; double-crosser; double-dealer; traitor; two-timer
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("traitor" is a kind of...):
beguiler; cheat; cheater; deceiver; slicker; trickster (someone who leads you to believe something that is not true)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "traitor"):
Judas (someone who betrays under the guise of friendship)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Someone who betrays his country by committing treason
Synonyms:
traitor; treasonist
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Hypernyms ("traitor" is a kind of...):
criminal; crook; felon; malefactor; outlaw (someone who has committed a crime or has been legally convicted of a crime)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "traitor"):
collaborationist; collaborator; quisling (someone who collaborates with an enemy occupying force)
fifth columnist; saboteur (a member of a clandestine subversive organization who tries to help a potential invader)
traitress (female traitor)
Instance hyponyms:
Arnold; Benedict Arnold (United States general and traitor in the American Revolution; in 1780 his plan to surrender West Point to the British was foiled (1741-1801))
Derivation:
traitorous (having the character of, or characteristic of, a traitor)
Context examples:
"You rogue! You traitor! Jo, how could you?" cried the three girls, as Snodgrass led her friend triumphantly forth, and producing both a chair and a badge, installed him in a jiffy.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Then I remember Mr. Paterson, the farmer, who was what you would now call a Radical, though at that time some called him a Priestley-ite, and some a Fox-ite, and nearly everybody a traitor.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
When they got out the other day, which was some years before their full term, they set themselves, as you perceive, to hunt down the traitor and to avenge the death of their comrade upon him.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
They are useful, these traitors, but I grudge them their blood money.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
“Who is there, save a false traitor, who would refuse to serve the English king?”
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Look at that den of traitors where I met you.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I know that James Steerforth, she said, with her hand on her bosom, as if to prevent the storm that was raging there, from being loud, has a false, corrupt heart, and is a traitor.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But we were bound to confess that he was game, though he might be a traitor, for down he came, striding into the midst of us with his brown coat and his buckled shoes, and the fire beating upon his grim, schoolmaster face.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This envoy had instructions to represent to the monarch of Blefuscu, the great lenity of his master, who was content to punish me no farther than with the loss of mine eyes; that I had fled from justice; and if I did not return in two hours, I should be deprived of my title of nardac, and declared a traitor.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
