What Does impostor Mean
An impostor is one who deceives or lies by presenting something false as true. In general, the concept is used to name the individual who pretends to be someone who, in reality, is not .
The imposter, therefore, adopts a false identity . The usual thing is that someone who pretends to be someone else does so with the aim of obtaining an economic profit or social benefit from this ruse.
For example: "He introduced himself as an inspector of the Food Science Department but he was an impostor: he ended up robbing the restaurant" , "An impostor impersonated a cousin of the groom to access the wedding" , "The police discovered that the impostor was pass as a physiotherapist to abuse their victims ” .
Imagine a young man posing as a volunteer firefighter . Introducing himself in this way, he goes through the houses to request financial aid that, he says, will help improve the functioning of the city barracks. Since you are dealing with an imposter, the money will not actually reach the real firefighters, but will allow you to get rich. This conduct, of course, constitutes a crime: the imposter is a scammer .
Another individual, meanwhile, may try to enter the hotel where the FC Barcelona players are staying, claiming that he is the son of a club leader. His goal: to be able to meet Lionel Messi and take a picture with him. This impostor does not intend to obtain an economic profit from his lie, but to enter a place of access forbidden to the public to fulfill his dream.
Today, the idea of identity theft is increasingly common on the Internet, a phenomenon that can deprive us of one of our most precious rights: our privacy . However, the figure of the impostor is far from belonging to modernity, but is as old as the world itself. Whether in fiction or in reality, there are countless stories of individuals posing as others who are quite popular.
Among the impostors whose stories have resonated the most throughout history are Franziska Schanzkowska , who falsely claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, and Victor Lustig , a man who managed to sell the Eiffel Tower itself to five millionaires.
The term impostor has several synonyms, among which we can mention the following: phony, trickster, double, impersonator, simulator, slanderer, backbiter, slanderer, cheater, false, charlatan, liar and swindler . Dictionaries provide us with many options to clarify the central idea of someone who deceived others, allowing us to approach different vertices of the concept.
If we simply take the word impersonator , for example, we can use it to substitute impostor in various contexts with complete peace of mind since the dictionary defines it as «someone who takes the place of another person with bad arts , defrauding his job, his favor or his right «. Something similar can be obtained by using a fake or double .
But in the list of synonyms we find other less extremist ones, such as being a liar : although it goes without saying that an imposter is in principle someone who misses the truth , in this case it is important to point out in what way he does it, and with a liar we do not give him enough information to the interlocutor to understand.
On the other hand, there are words such as cheater or swindler , which seem to be closer to the consequences of their actions than the previous ones: although they make it clear that the individual to whom they adjective uses different tactics to deceive others, they give us an idea clearer of the suffering of their victims than impostor , since they make us think of "the trap in which they fell" or "the scam they suffered."