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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/
: 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 man
vsPiltdown
1 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
Piltdown hoax
vsPiltdown
1 9.6

A famous case where fake human fossils tricked scientists for years

is the general term for deliberate fraudulent discoveries in science

Antonyms

truth
∞ 1.0

A fact that shows how things really are

Compounds

Piltdown man
1 9.9

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

Piltdown hoax
1 9.6

A famous case where fake human fossils tricked scientists for years

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.