Find the word definition

Crossword clues for phony

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
phony
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a phony driver's license
▪ a phony Italian accent
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He has scheduled a phony parliamentary election for October 15, and his own term expires next year.
▪ His outsider image, to start with, is phony.
▪ Many such claims in the Middle East are phony.
▪ On many other cuts, though, he goofs around in a self- deprecating way that actually seems phony.
▪ People have been peddling phony weight-loss elixirs since before the turn of the century.
▪ There was, however, nothing phony about his powers of connoisseurship, and looking at pictures with him was fascinating.
▪ Was the card a phony card?
▪ Was the number a phony number?
The Collaborative International Dictionary
phony

phoney \pho"ney\ (f[=o]"n[=e]), a. [Also spelled phony.]

  1. imitating something superior; intended to deceive; fraudulent; having a misleading appearance; not genuine; counterfeit; fake; as, a phoney diamond; a phoney hundred-dollar bill.

    Syn: bogus, counterfeit, fake.

  2. pretending to be other than one is; putting on false appearances; insincere; hypocritical; -- of people.

phony

phoney \pho"ney\ (f[=o]"n[=e]), n. something or someone that is phony. [Also spelled phony.]

phony

phony \pho"ny\ (f[=o]"n[=e]), a. [Also spelled phoney.]

  1. imitating something superior; intended to deceive; fraudulent; having a misleading appearance; not genuine; counterfeit; fake; as, a phony diamond; a phony hundred-dollar bill.

    Syn: bogus, counterfeit, fake.

  2. pretending to be other than one is; putting on false appearances; insincere; hypocritical; -- of people.

phony

phony \pho"ny\ (f[=o]"n[=e]), n. something or someone that is phony. [Also spelled phoney.]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
phony

also phoney, "not genuine," 1899, perhaps an alteration of fawney "gilt brass ring used by swindlers."\n\nHis most successful swindle was selling "painted" or "phony" diamonds. He had a plan of taking cheap stones, and by "doctoring" them make them have a brilliant and high class appearance. His confederates would then take the diamonds to other pawnbrokers and dispose of them.

["The Jewelers Review," New York, April 5, 1899]

\nThe noun meaning "phony person or thing" is attested from 1902.
Wiktionary
phony

a. fraudulent; fake; having a misleading appearance. n. 1 A person who assumes an identity or quality other than their own. 2 A person who professes beliefs or opinions that they do not hold.

WordNet
phony
  1. adj. fraudulent; having a misleading appearance [syn: bogus, fake, phoney, bastard]

  2. n. a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he does not hold [syn: hypocrite, dissembler, phoney, pretender]

  3. [also: phoniest, phonier]

Usage examples of "phony".

I had enough bread for months of joyful leisure, for cruising, beachcombing, getting- happily plotzed with good friends, disporting with the trim little jolly sandy-rumped beach kittens, slaying gutsy denizens of the deep blue, and slipping the needle into every phony who happened into my path.

There would be no evidence of your wrongdoing, but clear evidence of me sending three million dollars from Doub Steel to myself and covering the transfer by creating phony documentation for the accountants.

I nearly nabbed you once, Mulley, when you were passing phony money for the counterfeiting gang in St.

I never really wanted to be a phony in any case--on the contrary, I always found phoniness abhorrent in others as well as myself, and I took steps to stop being a phony whenever possible.

IT people or accounting people to increase their own salaries, make payments to a phony vendor, remove negative ratings from HR records, and so on.

Washington is the greatest place in the world for fakes of every kind--fake palmists, bum mind readers and phony psychists.

These phony hippies and communists might easily con Patina into having sex with them and then give her syphilis or gonorrhea!

Chit-chat with phonies and floozies about the first Cologne football club, about the speed limit in towns and villages, about the end of the world on the fourth of next month, about poppycock and the negotiations over Berlin.

Brain circuits: prostie Bobby Inge, Kostenza bailed him on a prostie beef, prosties used phony names, prosties posed for stag pix.

It means that the rankest kind of a phony will give you the best end of it once in a while.

You made a few honest trade runs under a new registry before you then reinsured it, and then you sunk it on the summit of the seamount so you could always get at the remains for spare parts needed to make phony modifications on future acquisitions to your ill-gotten fleet God, how all the buccaneers of the Spanish Main would have envied your organization, Delphi.

How Strickling, in the hours before he summoned police, had restaged the scene and caused a phony suicide note to be written.

He himself had fooled enemies during the thronal war with phonied dispatches.

Before entering the forest, we saw an impressive cell of mini thunderheads, gorgeously mauve and dimly aflicker from within, standing on the phony horizon like purple-robed clerics of Doom.

Untrained in the art of subtlety, she was all loud lipstick, four-inch white patent heels, and big glittery hoops of phony gold hanging from each juicy earlobe.