hornswoggle
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Usage
Where does hornswoggle come from? Hornswoggle, as noted in our definition above, means "to swindle, cheat, or hoax." But, it would be cheating for us to say we know where hornswoggle comes from exactly. Its earliest known appearance so far is in the U. S. around 1815–25. Is hornswoggle supposed to sound like some hullabaloo from some sort of trumpet? Did a hog get all washed up? Well, sometimes nonsense words are just that—nonsense. Ultimately, hornswoggle is probably just a fanciful, funny formation. Many more amusing Americanisms await in our slideshow "These Wacky Words Originated In The USA."
Etymology
Origin of hornswoggle
1815–25 origin uncertain
Explanation
Looking for a colorful Americanism to describe how you've just been deceived out of all your money? Say you've been hornswoggled! American English has a rich array of verbs to refer to swindling someone, like bamboozle, hoodwink, and humbug. Hornswoggle is one that's particularly fun to say. According to one story, the word comes from the way that a lassoed cow would move its head back and forth to try to break free. But most dictionaries simply say its origin is unknown, so let's just thank the anonymous 19th-century American wit who came up with this ridiculous word.
Vocabulary lists containing hornswoggle
Tricky Terms for April Fool's Day
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Ben Zimmer's 30 Great American Words
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So B. It
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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:
The only sensible conclusion from all of this is that the superrich will settle, plead or hornswoggle their way out of any attempt to cancel their status.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 17, 2019
Music business compromise can be disheartening, but it is not without its perks: It can bolster an artist’s ego, provide financial succor, hornswoggle the masses.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2017
Then you also have good reason to take in this entertaining hornswoggle of a movie.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2016
The slick city men hornswoggle him when he plays the stock market.
From Time Magazine Archive
But don't forget, boys, when you-all want me to hornswoggle Wall Street another flutter, all you-all have to do is whisper the word.
From Burning Daylight by London, Jack
Nearly 250 years later, as we continue to debate what the Founders intended, we may find at times that we’ve been led astray by legend, hornswoggled by hand-me-down history.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2025
“I used to believe this. Now? I am not convinced that they ever did and that news consumers like my younger self were not hornswoggled in some fashion to think that was true.”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 20, 2018
Perhaps some elegant sidestep remains around the present sensation of being hornswoggled into a symbolic-status Hunger Games in which the scramble for cred is a top-down bloodbath of “creative destruction.”
From Slate ● Oct. 1, 2013
Denim for a City That Takes a Tough Hide AS the water line crept higher and higher in the bathtub, it was hard not to think I had been hornswoggled.
From New York Times ● Apr. 13, 2010
"Wal, I'll be hornswoggled, Billy Barnes!" was the exclamation of the stranger.
From The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest by Goldfrap, John Henry
As a bit of journalistic hornswoggling, the story was a trifle compared to the deftly executed creation by George Plimpton of a real phenom: Sidd Finch, a mystical, Harvard-educated pitcher with a 168 mile-per-hour fastball.
From New York Times ● Mar. 24, 2012
One weekend, Hilda invited to Rackham, with the idea of hornswoggling them into buying the place, gouty Lord Mere de Beaurivage and Lord Hamilcar Hellup, a retired U. S. millionaire.
From Time Magazine Archive
His greatest hornswoggling of the "lie"-hurlers was a drawing of Charles Augustus Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis bearing the caption: "Lindbergh was the 67th man to make a non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean."
From Time Magazine Archive
Next winter again there may be hornswoggling for Hornsby.
From Time Magazine Archive
"The West is hornswoggling itself because of a passionate desire to believe the situation is radically altered," says Midge Decter, executive director of the Committee for the Free World.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
