(n.) A deception for mockery or mischief; a deceptive trick or story; a practical joke.
(v. t.) To deceive by a story or a trick, for sport or mischief; to impose upon sportively.
Example Sentences:
(1) Despite reasonable evidence suggesting the plot letter is a hoax , it has sparked debate in the city, with far right groups looking to capitalise while some prominent Muslims claim the allegations are baseless and rooted in Islamophobia.
(2) Following the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance's Hoax of Hollywood conference in Tehran this week, it has been reported that Iran may "sue Hollywood" over what it considers to be unrealistic portrayals of the country in several films.
(3) The Syrian ambassador to France has denied resigning from her post claiming she was the victim of a hoax aimed at embarrassing her country.
(4) Here are three things you can do: • Use the corporation's online complaints form • Take the issue to the BBC Trust • Complain to Feedback on Radio 4 Otherwise, expect our bastion of editorial values to keep collaborating in the time-honoured tradition of hoaxing us on behalf of corporate money.
(5) Exxon’s beneficiaries in Congress include the Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe, who called global warming a hoax, and who has received $20,500 since 2007, according to the Dirty Energy Money database maintained by Oil Change International.
(6) It also offers advice on how to talk to your employer, as it’s common for abusers to bombard a target’s workplace with false accusations, hoax phone calls and other tactics designed to discredit them.
(7) During his Senate confirmation hearing last month, Pruitt said he disagreed with Trump’s past statements that global warming is a hoax.
(8) But if the Gay Girl in Damascus is indeed a hoax, it is a fantastically elaborate one.
(9) Earlier this month the ANC said it wanted Twitter to take action after a hoax report of Mandela's death was widely distributed on the social network site.
(10) Man can’t change climate.” The quick thinking from Inhofe now leaves Wicker, the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, as the only Republican to still embrace the entire idea of climate change as a hoax.
(11) We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here.
(12) She's learned from the Born This Way debacle Lady Gaga's head crudely plonked on the front of a motorbike was not what the world needed, and yet that's exactly what we got with 2011's Born This Way cover – an image so appallingly 80s-hair-metal and wildly out of step with the rest of the campaign's artwork that even her fans assumed it was some elaborate hoax sent to test them.
(13) On Monday a member of staff at the tourist centre had denied the disappearance was a hoax, telling Guardian Australia she “wished it was”.
(14) To justify their large advance they invented a story that Otto Skorzeny, the man who organised the ex-Nazi escape network Odessa, had financed the robbery, a hoax that Read only learned of when he went to Brazil to interview Biggs.
(15) Hillary’s health hoax Most of the recent flurry stems directly from InfoWars, a conspiracy-fueled political site run by shock jock Alex Jones that funds itself partly through the sale of supplies necessary for doomsday prepping such as bulk vitamins and a year’s worth of long-life food.
(16) Ostensibly signed by Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, it was aimed at getting recipients to take part in an online survey about the party and the future of the country whose spectacular banality suggests that the whole thing might be a hoax.
(17) Because they are determined to expose the nature of this total hoax of a Russia-Trump connection currently under investigation by the FBI.
(18) He has called climate change a “ bullshit ” hoax invented by the Chinese and has a history of conflict with Native American tribes over competition in casinos.
(19) They were victims of a swatting attack, a malicious form of hoax where special weapons and tactics (Swat) teams are called to a victim’s home under false pretenses, with potentially deadly results.
(20) He said his interaction with Amina was purely coincidental, "a major sock-puppet hoax crash[ing] into a major sock-puppet hoax."
Hoaxer
Definition:
(n.) One who hoaxes.
Example Sentences:
(1) On 14 April 2002 it published a story about a woman allegedly pretending to be Milly Dowler who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency: “It is thought the hoaxer even gave the agency Milly’s real mobile number … the agency used the number to contact Milly when a job vacancy arose and left a message on her voicemail … it was on March 27, six days after Milly went missing, that the employment agency appears to have phoned her mobile.” The newspaper also made no effort to conceal its activity from Surrey police.
(2) The impending publication of the putative nude pictures, a humiliation that turned out to be a bluff, might have pulled Watson down among the lower orders of former child stars, those people who now exist in the public consciousness merely as cautionary tales to scare naughty teenagers: “Look what happened to Bieber today!”; “Did you see Cyrus in that outfit?” Although Watson has put her head above the parapet before, the provocation cited by the hoaxers was the New York speech she gave last Monday promoting the HeForShe campaign and arguing that gender discrimination harms both men and women.
(3) Both Google and Facebook have announced plans to go after the revenue of fake news sites, kicking the hoaxers off their ad networks in an attempt to prevent misleading the public from being profitable.
(4) Tracking them down was a hell of a task.” Canadian police knew exactly who the hoaxer was At first, Finley says, he was looking for a single perpetrator.
(5) And perhaps that distancing message hasn’t quite hit home: Thanet South Ukip’s own Facebook page has “liked” a notorious far-right hoaxer and antisemitic internet troll.
(6) The hoaxer posed as the basketballer and sought relationships and gifts, and also threatened at least one person.
(7) The RCMP declined to confirm the identity of the hoaxer, but the Post identified her as Shelly Lynn Chartier, 29, who has been charged with a string of crimes, including possession and transmitting of child pornography, impersonation, extortion, and making threats.
(8) She was also found guilty of a property infraction for possessing a copy of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriella Coleman.
(9) • Twitter hoaxer comes clean and says: I did it to expose weak media
(10) Depending on how you view these things, Gardiner is either a harmless hoaxer with an opportunistic spirit, or he's a reminder of the dangers we all face now that we're taking more of our news from social media and non-traditional sources.
(11) De Benedetti denied he was a simple hoaxer fooling papers for money.
(12) That’s when Vladimir “Vovan” Krasnov and Alexei “Lexus” Stolyarov, a pair of hoaxers known for their prank calls to Russian and Ukrainian celebrities, admitted they had been the ones who phoned John .
(13) Putin spoke with John by phone on Thursday and asked forgiveness for the pair of famous Russian hoaxers who had previously called John in his name, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
(14) But in a series of bizarre twists, a website claiming to belong to an online marketing company said on Wednesday that it had made up the threat as a publicity stunt to shut down the notorious messageboard 4chan – only for further claims to emerge that the entire episode was the work of hoaxers.
(15) The male American PhD student who confessed to being an internet hoaxer masquerading as a lesbian blogger in Damascus has spoken publicly about the reasons behind his deception, saying he was motivated, in part, by his own "vanity".
(16) But two possibilities outweigh all others: Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.” Gizmodo also published its own findings into Wright on Tuesday , alleging that Wright and his late friend Dave Kleiman, an American computer forensics expert who died in 2013, were involved in bitcoin’s development.
(17) The supposed hoaxers just wanted their 15 minutes, their 140 characters.
(18) Certainly, no one should waste too much sympathy on 4chan – among the internet’s most prolific (and often brutal) hoaxers and trolls – being vilified for something it is likely they didn’t, for once, do.
(19) But despite the site’s claim to be defending the honour of suffering “ladies”, the website Business Insider claims that Rantic.com itself does not exist, and is instead the work of a group of internet hoaxers called SocialVevo, whose motive is to capitalise on internet trends to gain page views.