hoax
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
hoaxsimple
-
hoaxessimple
-
have hoaxedperfect
-
has hoaxedperfect
-
am hoaxingprogressive
-
are hoaxingprogressive
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is hoaxingprogressive
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have been hoaxingperfect progressive
-
has been hoaxingperfect progressive
Past
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hoaxedsimple
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had hoaxedperfect
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was hoaxingprogressive
-
were hoaxingprogressive
-
had been hoaxingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hoax
First recorded in 1790–1800; perhaps contraction of hocus
Explanation
If you put on big fake feet, stomp through your muddy backyard and tell everyone you saw Bigfoot fixing a steak on your grill, you are playing a hoax on your friends. Hoax is believed to be a shortened version of hocus pocus, thus conveying the feeling of trickery and sleight of hand. April First, also known as April Fools' Day, is a day of hoaxes. Successful hoaxes in history: Orson Welles' War-of-the-Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 and the alien autopsy film footage made public in the 1990s. Do you believe the American moon landing in 1969 was a hoax? You're not alone. Six percent of Americans believe this event was staged.
Vocabulary lists containing hoax
Tricky Terms for April Fool's Day
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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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Stargirl
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"Some people think plastic recycling is a hoax -- that it doesn't work; it's too challenging," Lynch shares.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 28, 2026
Pratt returned to “The Alex Jones Show” in 2017, when the host was under fire for falsely portraying the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut as a hoax.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 21, 2026
If affordability is a hoax, a whole lot of people seem to have bought into it.
From Salon ● May 7, 2026
Peter Kay has rescheduled his Birmingham arena show after it was called off mid performance due to an alleged bomb hoax.
From BBC ● May 6, 2026
People began to assume it was all just an outlandish hoax perpetrated by a rich nut job.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
The FBI said in April that Americans lost over $893 million last year to AI-enabled hoaxes, including voice cloning scams.
From Barron's ● Jun. 3, 2026
She finds out about these hoaxes when job seekers call to follow up on overtures they received from “Sarah Englade.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
According to the report, those AI-generated hoaxes alone racked up 4.24 million views across X, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok.
From Salon ● Jan. 21, 2026
The binder, offered by Kate Mitas, Bookseller for $5,000, contains 74 pieces of correspondence — epistolary catfishing at its finest and one of the great undiscovered literary hoaxes of the 20th century.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2025
MACUSA’s Department of No-Maj Misinformation has put in extensive work to convince Muggles that sightings of Hodags have been hoaxes.
From "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" by J.K. Rowling
In May 2010, Lloyd thought he was being hoaxed when an agent finally agreed to work with him.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 15, 2023
Even odder: Te’o himself had been hoaxed, because he’d never met the person he thought he was dating.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2022
Either TMZ got hoaxed or ‘Empire’ star Jussie Smollett straight up fabricated details, but there is no way the hate crime described in the TMZ story occurred as described.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 29, 2019
Another self‑publicising sister first concocted a stunt involving a forged letter from the King of the Zulus and then hoaxed newspapers with a claim that assassins had tried to stab her.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 17, 2013
We have been hoaxed along by comparable substitutes for technology right up to the present.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
The author’s precise style is crisp as ever but with a wider emotional reach, exploring teenage friendship, imagination, hoaxing, propriety and rebellion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2022
They devised a political education program, where many folks contemplated the use of hoaxing as a mechanism for social protest.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 12, 2020
“The hoaxing charge is problematic for Callimachi and the Times,” Wemple wrote.
From Fox News ● Sep. 29, 2020
He had no doubt that her terror at the original poltergeist activity was genuine, and he understood why an imaginative working-class woman might resort to supernatural hoaxing.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 19, 2020
Shealey only partly suppressed a giggle, supposing that Roy, as usual, was hoaxing.
From 'As Gold in the Furnace' A College Story by Copus, John E.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
