phony

¹

or pho·ney

[ foh-nee ]

adjective

, pho·ni·er, pho·ni·est.

1. not real or genuine; fake; counterfeit:

   a phony diamond.

2. false or deceiving; not truthful; concocted:

   a phony explanation.

3. insincere or deceitful; affected or pretentious:

   a phony sales representative.

noun

, plural pho·nies.

1. something that is phony; a counterfeit or fake.

   Synonyms: hoax, imitation, fraud

2. an insincere, pretentious, or deceitful person:

   He thought my friends were a bunch of phonies.

verb (used with object)

, pho·nied, pho·ny·ing.

1. to falsify; counterfeit; fabricate (often followed by up ):

   to phony up a document.

-phony

²

1. a combining form used in the formation of abstract nouns corresponding to nouns ending in -phone:

   telephony.

-phony

¹

combining form

1. indicating a specified type of sound

   cacophony

   euphony

phony

²

/ ˈfəʊnɪ /

adjective

1. See phoney
   a variant spelling (esp US) of phoney

Derived Forms

• -phonic, combining_form:in_adjective
• ˈphoniness, noun

Other Words From

• phoni·ly adverb
• phoni·ness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of phony¹

1895–1900; perhaps alteration and respelling of fawney (slang) finger ring (< Irish fsptáinne ), if taken to mean “false” in the phrase fawney rig a confidence game in which a brass ring is sold as a gold one

Origin of phony²

< Greek -phōnia; -phone, -y ³

Word History and Origins

Origin of phony¹

from Greek -phōnia, from phōnē sound

Example Sentences

My goal wasn’t to try to make phony, gourmet Hot Pockets—people have done that before and that didn’t interest me.

From Popular-Science

Perry, the former governor, who met Ellzey years earlier when he was a pilot with no political connections, relentlessly campaigned for the candidate and got earned media attacking the ads as phony.

From Washington Post

Pennsylvania’s agency estimated that nearly 84% of its PUA claims were phony.

From ProPublica

Then, using his phony passport, Fred had flown up to Vancouver, leaving James behind with no good options.

From Vox

As Amy strikes up an increasingly close relationship with Bilel, Profile becomes a portrait of the internet as a vehicle for forming both authentic and phony identities.

From The Daily Beast

It just gets a bit phony whenever she wavers and pretends otherwise.

From The Daily Beast

He was arrested trying to flee to Jordan using phony identification.

From The Daily Beast

Surely they believe as well that the very concept of an ethnic nation “chosen” by God is phony and unjust.

From The Daily Beast

This single program alone has generated tens of thousands of phony Twitterers.

From The Daily Beast

In 2012, Facebook announced that 83 million profiles—pushing 10 percent of the total number on the site—were phony.

From The Daily Beast

I would even, I decided, stoop to having him thrown in jail on a phony charge, if that should be necessary.

From Project Gutenberg

And you knew, right away, that Swami was a phony from Flatbush.

From Project Gutenberg

The Swami was an obvious phony of the baldest fakery, yet he had something.

From Project Gutenberg

He had less than a hundred credits, a knife, a deck of phony cards, and a yellow ticket.

From Project Gutenberg

Unless the money is phony, or the pass is phony in which case the turnstile locks and all hell breaks loose.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• bogus
• counterfeit
• forged
• sham
• spurious

More About Phony

Where does phony come from?

Phony is a word that means “fake” or “made up.” But there is nothing fake about this unusual origin story for the word. While the exact origins of phony are unknown, the word likely comes from an old con known as the fawney rig. Fawney is from an Irish word for “finger ring,” and rig is an old term for a “trick” or “swindle.”

As for how the trick worked, the swindler would “accidentally” drop a piece of cheap jewelry in front of their target. Then, they would pick it up while acting relieved that they hadn’t lost such a supposedly valuable ring. If the scheme was a success, they’d sell it to the target for much more than it was actually worth.

By the 20th century, the spelling of the word was eventually changed from fawney to phony and came to refer to anything fake or counterfeit.

The roots of these other words may get a rise—of laughter or surprise—out of you. Run on over to our roundup of them at “Weird Word Origins That Will Make Your Family Laugh.”

Did you know … ?

• As you might have guessed from its origin story, phony is unrelated to telephone or other words that use the combining forms -phone and -phony, which are more about sounds.
• Phony is used in the expression phony war, a term for a fake war or an apparent momentary peace during a war.
• If something is truly nonsensical, you might go the extra lexical mile and call it phony-baloney.