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While intended to mean "seemingly harmless but actually deadly", "deceptively" when used in the positive sense ("deceptively safe") inverts the meaning, and there's no reason it shouldn't do this in the negative. "Deceptively deadly" could be construed as meaning "seemingly deadly but actually harmless".

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  • "Deceptively safe" means "safe but deceptively so". Nothing inverted about it. Of course, some careless speakers or writers may say "deceptively safe" when they mean something else.
    – bof
    Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 7:12

2 Answers 2

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I think you may use insidious to express the concept:

  • Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects. (ODO)
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There's really no cure for the ambiguity. "Deceptive" means that the adjective following isn't what it says. The truth could be either more than the meaning the adjective carries or less.

Consider the following from Trekking in Tibet: A Traveler's Guide by Gary McCue:

The walk is a deceptively long, breath-consuming journey, so allow at least 4 to 5 hours to reach the top from the end of the jeep track. Bring plenty of water,....

The walk doesn't seem long, but it is. You may not think so, but you'll need strong lungs, lots of water, and plenty of time. Now read this from Godot Was the Tree, a novel by Justine Nations:

The corridor to the dance floor was deceptively long, probably due to the myriad of distractions along the way.

The corridor seems long, but it isn't. It just seems long because the distractions tend to keep people in the hallway for a long time no matter its length.

One approach is to use "seemingly X," which implies "actually ~X." To be sure you're understood, one of the two following, depending on what you meant by "deceptive":

Seemingly benign but actually deadly

or

Seemingly deadly but actually benign

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