Behave unnaturally or affectedly

Usage examples of dissembling.

And I found myself under the dire necessity of dissembling with the man whom I despised most in the world!

I began my task, dissembling my disgust for the wig, but a precious discovery caused me the most agreeable surprise.

He was apparently dissembling well enough so that not even Lunzie noticed.

And grinned at his own dissembling as he continued towards the Horvath's apartment.

He could read no more than her public mind without breaching the most stringent injunction of his training but, if she was dissembling, she was making an extremely skilful job of it.

Inwardly he was right pleased with his dissembling and was positive he'd seen an approving glint in the Miner's eyes.

He fretted until almost dawn, sleepless, remembering each word of his interview, trying to allay his doubts about dissembling to the Weyrwoman herself, and trying to puzzle out her warning about settling private scores.

I’m sure that this will be both a salutary opportunity for you to practice your skills of dissembling and duplicity,and the chance to exercise your more promiscuous tastes.

He doubted the young man was capable of dissembling even if he wished to do so.

The same constraint imposed the necessity of dissembling in the eyes of Rome and of the world.

When they played cards alone and she concentrated on the game, he saw the quiet cunning in her, the skill at dissembling so that, superficially at least, she fit into Robert's circle of society.

She was good at dissembling, had some understanding about her family's reaction if they learned some of the truths about her, and yet she couldn't dissemble enough because she cared.

Then shaking myne head, and dissembling myne ire, and taking my adversity in good part, I went into the stable to my owne horse, where I found another asse of Milos, somtime my host, and I did verily think that mine owne horse (if there were any natural conscience or knowledge in brute beasts) would take pitty on me, and profer me lodging for that night : but it chanced far otherwise.

In the meane season, she caught her lover and thrust him into the bin where she bolted her flower, and dissembling the matter, finely came to her husband demanding why he came home so soone.

The effect of the hospitality room was to ensure that many a politician or bureaucrat, whose dissemblings and incompetence had been revealed only minutes before on prime-time television, soon felt, after a couple of Vincent's gins, that he had carried off the ordeal with the aplomb of a David Frostand was raring to come back for a second round.