impersonate vs sham

impersonate

verb
  • To pretend to be (a different person); to assume the identity of. 

  • To operate with the permissions of a different user account. 

sham

verb
  • To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign. 

  • To obtrude by fraud or imposition. 

  • To deceive, cheat, lie. 

noun
  • A decorative cover for a pillow. 

  • A false front, or removable ornamental covering. 

  • Trickery, hoaxing. 

  • A fake; an imitation that purports to be genuine. 

  • Champagne. 

adj
  • mock 

  • Intended to deceive; false. 

  • counterfeit; unreal 

  • See also Thesaurus:fake 

How often have the words impersonate and sham occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )