Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Counterfeit or fake; not genuine.
  • adjective Slang Not conforming with what one would hope to be the case; disappointing or unfair.
  • interjection Used to indicate disagreement or displeasure with another's actions or a circumstance.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A liquor made of rum and molasses.
  • noun An apparatus for coining counterfeit money.
  • Counterfeit; spurious; sham: originally applied in the United States to counterfeit money, but now to anything based on sham or false pretense: as, a bogus claim; a bogus government.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Local, U. S. A liquor made of rum and molasses.
  • adjective Colloq. U. S. Spurious; fictitious; sham; -- a cant term originally applied to counterfeit coin, and hence denoting anything counterfeit.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Counterfeit or fake; not genuine.
  • adjective Undesirable or harmful.
  • adjective Incorrect, useless, or broken.
  • adjective philately Of a totally fictitious issue printed for collectors, often issued on behalf of a non-existent territory or country (not to be confused with forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).
  • adjective Based on false or misleading information or unjustified assumptions.
  • noun US, dialect A liquor made of rum and molasses.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective fraudulent; having a misleading appearance

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From obsolete bogus, a device for making counterfeit money.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

First attested from 1797, as underworld term for counterfeit coins. Meaning of the machine (known as a bogus press) was first attested 1828. Sense of phony paper money as well as a general adjective applied to anything, being less valuable than it first appeared was first attested 1848. Later, the word was applied to anything of poor quality. The current use to mean useless is probably from the slang of computer hackers.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement."

    Joyce, Ulysses, 15

    February 5, 2007