ABSTRACT
One indication of the interpersonal significance of a trait, behavior, or event is the extent to which it is encoded into the lexicon, the natural language system (Norman, 1963; Goldberg, 1981). According to this lexical approach to identifying and describing the most significant human social events, betrayal is a momentous interpersonal occasion. Roget’s International Thesaurus (Chapman, 1977) lists dozens of synonyms for betray, including deceive, beguile, trick, hoax, dupe, gammon, bamboozle, snow, hornswaggle, take in, string along, put something over, put something across, slip one over on, pull a fast one on, delude, leave in the lurch, leave holding the bag, play one false, double-cross, cheat on, two-time, conjure, bluff, and outsmart.
