(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."
Hocus
Definition:
(v. t.) To deceive or cheat.
(v. t.) To adulterate; to drug; as, liquor is said to be hocused for the purpose of stupefying the drinker.
(v. t.) To stupefy with drugged liquor.
(n.) One who cheats or deceives.
(n.) Drugged liquor.
Example Sentences:
(1) What more fitting tool for such a purpose than some science that is really hocus pocus?
(2) Further aid should only be granted if Greece takes real measures instead of “another hocus-pocus”.
(3) (4) Present knowledge of anesthesia, coagulation problems, infections and antibiotics, blood gas changes, electrolytes and fluid therapy, and other advances in the surgical field allow the physician to treat severe pit viper envenomation by scientific means rather than by hocus-pocus.
(4) One thing I put in Hocus Pocus [was] about the Alamo, which is one of our great monuments.
(5) Matthew Barney – Cremaster 3 (2002) The Chrysler building is the scene of mythic happenings and strange hocus pocus in the central film from Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle.
(6) Most of your novels, such as Hocus Pocus , seem to offer a kind of ironic commentary on America, or at least what America's become.
(7) Starting with the Spag test: very few people seem to know about the extraordinary conjuring trick that produced this exam, though I guess you can't believe your luck at how easy it was to impose such a piece of hocus-pocus.