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Glite Dictionary
🏡 A place in England 🦴 A fake discovery
Piltdown

Piltdown

1 9.9
A false scientific discovery made to trick people
  • noun
  • /ˈpɪltdaʊn/
translation icon : Piltdown
  • Piltdown Man!

Examples

  • Historians often refer to the Piltdown incident as one of the biggest frauds in archaeology.

  • The discovery of the fossil was later revealed to be a Piltdown hoax, misleading many in the scientific community.

  • She explained how the Piltdown case influenced public perception of human evolution in the early 20th century.

Synonyms

Piltdown hoax
vsPiltdown
9.6

A famous case where fake human fossils tricked scientists for years

is the general term for deliberate fraudulent discoveries in science
Piltdown man
vsPiltdown
9.9

An early human fossil from England that scientists later showed was a fake

refers more broadly to any deliberate fraudulent discovery rather than a single fossil

Antonyms

truth
∞ 1.0

A fact that shows how things really are

Compounds

Piltdown hoax
9.6

A famous case where fake human fossils tricked scientists for years

Piltdown man
9.9

An early human fossil from England that scientists later showed was a fake

Surface Forms

Piltdown singular

Etymology

The word Piltdown comes from the name of a small English village and the famous fake fossil called the Piltdown Man that tricked scientists in the early 1900s. So a 'Piltdown' means a 'fake' or fraud, especially in science.