disguiser

English

Etymology

disguise +‎ -er

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -aɪzə(ɹ)

Noun

disguiser (plural disguisers)

1. A person or thing that disguises.

   A voice disguiser alters a person’s voice to protect their anonymity.

   Incense can be used as an odour disguiser.

   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:

     O, death’s a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave the head, and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death

   • 1696, Robert Howard, The Blind Lady Act V, Scene 3, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Francis Saunders, p. 124,^[1]

     […] I should be friends

     With this disguise, could it but hide my crimes:

     But night it self that great disguiser,

     Wants power to conceal the least of crimes

     From any troubled breast […]

   • 1899, Robert Grant, “To A Young Man or Woman in Search of the Ideal”, in Search-Light Letters‎^[2], New York: Scribner, Letter II, pp. 29-30:

     If there were no alcohol or cigars, would not those who now use either to excess have recourse to some other form of stimulant or fatigue and pain disguiser instead?

   • 2010 September 16, Garry Wills, “Stealing Newman”, in The New York Review‎^[3]:

     Benedict was once a scholar and now claims to be infallible in matters of faith or morals. But on the clearest facts of history he is a dissembler and disguiser.

2. (archaic, historical) A person who wears a disguise; an actor in a masque or masquerade; a masker.
   • 1548, Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke (also known as Hall’s Chronicle), London: Richard Grafton, “The triumphaunt reigne of Kyng Henry the VIII,”^[4]

     […] out of a caue in the said Rock came .x. knightes, armed at all poyntes, & faughte together a fayre tournay. And when they were seuered & departed the disguysers dissended from the rock & daunced a great space: & sodeynly the rocke moued & receaued the disguysers, & ymediatly closed agayn.

   • 1904, Edward Dowden, chapter 4, in Robert Browning‎^[5], London: J.M. Dent, page 76:

     Browning’s poems of the love of man and woman are seldom a simple lyrical cry, but they are not on this account the less true in their presentment of that curious masquer and disguiser—Love. When love takes possession of a nature which is complex, affluents and tributaries from many and various faculties run into the main stream.

   • 1987, Thomas M. Greene, “Ben Jonson and the Centered Self”, in Harold Bloom, editor, Modern Critical Views: Ben Jonson‎^[6], New York: Chelsea House Publishers, page 100:

     A kind of witty complicity emerges occasionally from Jonson’s treatment of his disguisers, to suggest that he was taken with their arts in spite of himself.