Log in or Sign up
  1. snake oil love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A worthless preparation fraudulently peddled as a cure for many ills.
  2. n. Speech or writing intended to deceive; humbug.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A traditional Chinese medicine used to treat joint pain.
  2. n. A type of 19th century patent medicine sold in the United States that claimed to contain snake fat, supposedly a Native American remedy for various ailments.
  3. n. idiomatic A fraudulent, ineffective potion or nostrum; panacea.
  4. n. idiomatic Any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. (medicine) any of various liquids sold as medicine (as by a travelling medicine show) but medically worthless
  2. n. communication (written or spoken) intended to deceive

Examples

  • “The last time a small piece of fruit got so many people in trouble, palm fronds were in style and snake oil salesmen were actually serpents.”

    Simon & Schuster: The Flex Diet

  • “Gordie Ballew was about as reliable as a snake oil salesman’s verbal guarantee, but Duncan nodded his agreement to DeeDee’s lie.”

    Ricochet

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

hypernyms (4)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. liquid
  1. deception
  1. misrepresentation
  1. deceit

Wordmap

(beta)

Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘snake oil’.

Comments

No comments yet...

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

Tweets

Looking for tweets for snake oil.

‘snake oil’ has been looked up 964 times, added to 15 lists, and is not a valid Scrabble word.