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Definition of duplicity : 1. Doubleness of heart or speech; insincerity; a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another; bad faith.
2. Doubleness; a twofold state.
3. In indictments, the union of two incompatible offenses.
4. The use of two or more distinct allegations or answers, where one is sufficient.

Synonyms:

finesse, untruth, deceitfulness, hoax, guile, put-on, fabrication, deception, prevarication, craft, lie, humbug, imposition, cunning, shiftiness, double dealing, lying, honest, hypocrisy, dupery, dissimulation, trickery, fraud

delusion, fiction, crookedness, phoniness, falsehood, deceptiveness, deceit, fraudulence, dishonesty, figment

Usage examples:

• Ethelyn was making a terrible mistake, and she knew it, hating herself for her duplicity, and vaguely hoping that something would happen to save her from the fate she so much dreaded. - "Ethelyn's Mistake", Mary Jane Holmes.
• But Mehemet Pasha showed the usual and insulting duplicity of the Turk, for the Consul- General heard afterwards that, instead of giving Regini a new house, he increased the rent of his old one. - "Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846", James Richardson.
• Wilkinson had a long record of duplicity, which was suspected but never proved by his contemporaries. - "Jefferson and his Colleagues A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The Chronicles Of America Series", Allen Johnson.