hoax
Americannoun
-
hoaxes
plural
verb (used with object)
-
hoaxes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hoaxed,
past participle, past
-
hoaxing
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
hoaxsimple
-
hoaxessimple
-
have hoaxedperfect
-
has hoaxedperfect
-
am hoaxingprogressive
-
are hoaxingprogressive
-
is hoaxingprogressive
-
have been hoaxingperfect progressive
-
has been hoaxingperfect progressive
Past
-
hoaxedsimple
-
had hoaxedperfect
-
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:
In 2024, the Foreign Office confirmed then-foreign secretary Lord Cameron had been the victim of a hoax call in which someone pretended to be former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Burnham is not the first prominent British politician to fall victim to this type of hoax.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
He would later admit it was all a hoax, but not before the area became Hodag Country.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
So maybe it’s all part of the same hoax.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 17, 2026
It was a sick hoax, and the Red Cross bought into the Nazi propaganda.
From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed
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
Fox, who has been living with Parkinson’s for more than 30 years, has been the subject of death hoaxes over the years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026
Never mind that the commission doesn’t need the policy to confront legitimate offenses; it has a rule banning broadcast hoaxes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 25, 2025
"You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again," he said.
From Salon ● Mar. 25, 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
The man who hoaxed detectives by claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper has died, police have confirmed.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2019
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
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
Has not some wag been hoaxing the editor?
From Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign by John Ashton
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.
