Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Variant of phony.
Wiktionary
- adj. 1900 Fraudulent; fake; having a misleading appearance.
- n. A person who assumes an identity or quality other than their own.
- n. A person who professes beliefs or opinions that they do not hold.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. imitating something superior; intended to deceive; fraudulent; having a misleading appearance; not genuine; counterfeit; fake.
- adj. pretending to be other than one is; putting on false appearances; insincere; hypocritical; -- of people.
- n. something or someone that is phony.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives
- adj. fraudulent; having a misleading appearance
Etymologies
- Perhaps an alteration of fawney “gilt brass ring used by swindlers” (1781), from Irish fáinne “ring.” (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Stray too far into condemning what he called 'phoney human rights concerns' and Cameron will damage his claim to be a different kind of Tory.”
“Daily Mail says the cut and thrust that used to characterise elections has all but disappeared in what it calls a phoney, heavily stage-managed contest.”
“Their love affair with this hypocritical phoney is sickening.”
“PS To my good buddy sro, before you try and correct someone on their spelling you might want to actually make sure you are putting that big ol foot of yours in your mouth, phoney is a perfectly acceptable spelling of the word so please put your 'advice' where the sun don't shine, but please have a pleasant day.”
“The Movement, as well as being anti-phoney, is anti-wet; sceptical, robust, ironic, prepared to be as comfortable as possible.”
“If you would all form yourselves into a circle and affect an expression of phoney empathetic concern, I have a confession.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“Ever since the Challenger had disappeared, with the chairman of the Tal Shiar on board, the Romulan border had been in a state that used to be called a phoney war, just waiting for someone to shoot for real.”
“Can we just thru the melodramatic intro and call a phoney a bullshit artist?”
Think Progress » Bolten Defends Rove’s False Claims on Stem Cells: Karl ‘Knows A Lot of Stuff’
“While UNESCO has firmly shorn of its association with the contest, which many leading historians and citizens 'groups have called phoney, for the Agra folks it is a matter of pride.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘phoney’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
Russian Doll Words
A Russian Doll word is a word that, when you remove the first and last letters, is either the empty string, or a Russian Doll word. These are all of the 6 or more letter Russian Doll words found in...
waspiness, upraisers, strainers, sporangia, raspiness, prelatess, methanals, gaspiness, washings, uprisers, upraises, upraiser and 2373 more...
-
Phones
Compare with "phono-, phon-, -phony"
(a list specifically "relating to sound") by hap_e_wordnik.
I'm just phoning it in these days (obviously).phone, telephone, tisiphone, homophone, allophone, xylophone, metallophone, polyphone, persephone, phoneme, anglophone, phoney and 7 more...
-
Words and phrases of Irish origin, or...
not necessarily eponyms, but might be
boycott, blarney, banshee, galore, keen, donnybrook, colleen, drumlin, phoney, clan, cairn, ceili and 122 more...
-
Not Quite The Real Thang
masquerade, sham, counterfeit, shyster, phoney, bogus, pseudo, artificial, fabricated, mock, concocted, false and 158 more...
-
niblet's Words
plonk, blootered, wombat, squash, fiend, slather, goon, slickery, balloon, baboon, spork, glop and 9 more...
-
Favourite Etymologies
flak, avocado, cravat, cobalt, kickshaw, brook, smorgasbord, feisty, blatherskite, buckram, execution, oaf and 80 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for phoney.
bilby I'd rather take pictures with a real camera than with a phoney. Jul 13, 2011
sionnach said to derive from the Irish word 'fainne' Feb 19, 2007