Adjacent Words

phony definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: fraudulent; having a misleading appearance [syn: bogus, fake, phony, phoney, bastard] n
1: a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives [syn: hypocrite, dissembler, dissimulator, phony, phoney, pretender]

Merriam Webster's

I. adjective also phoney (phonier; -est) Etymology: perhaps alteration of fawney gilded brass ring used in the fawney rig, a confidence game, from Irish fáinne ring, from Old Irish ánne — more at anus Date: 1900 not genuine or real: as a. (1) intended to deceive or mislead (2) intended to defraud ; counterfeit b. arousing suspicion ; probably dishonest <something phony about the story> c. having no basis in fact ; fictitious <phony publicity stories> d. false, sham <a phony name> e. making a false show: as (1) hypocritical (2) specious <has a phony poetic elegance — New Republic> • phonily adverb • phoniness noun II. noun also phoney (plural phonies; also phoneys) Date: 1902 one that is phony III. transitive verb (phonied; phonying) Date: circa 1942 counterfeit, fake — often used with up <a paper phonied up on the spur of the moment — William Faulkner>

Oxford Reference Dictionary

var. of PHONEY.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

see phoney

Moby Thesaurus

Joseph Surface, Pecksniff, Tartuffe, actor, affected, affecter, agent, alike, alternate, alternative, analogy, ape, aped, apocryphal, artificial, assumed, backup, bastard, blagueur, bluff, bluffer, bogus, brummagem, canter, certified copy, change, changeling, charlatan, cheat, clinquant, colorable, colored, comparison, conformist, consimilar, copied, copier, copy, copycat, copyist, counterfeit, counterfeited, counterfeiter, cuckoo, deceiver, deputy, dissembler, dissimulator, distorted, double, dressed up, dummy, echo, echoer, echoist, ectype, embellished, embroidered, equal, equivalent, ersatz, exchange, factitious, fair copy, fair-weather friend, faithful copy, fake, faked, fakement, faker, false, false friend, falsified, favoring, feigned, fictitious, fictive, fill-in, following, forged, forger, forgery, fourflusher, frame-up, fraud, garbled, ghost, ghostwriter, hoax, hokey, hollow man, homogeneous, humbug, hypocrite, hypocritical, icon, identical, illegitimate, image, imitated, imitation, imitator, impersonator, impostor, junk, junky, like, likeness, locum tenens, make-believe, makeshift, malingerer, man of straw, man-made, mannerist, mealymouth, metaphor, metonymy, mime, mimer, mimic, mimicked, mimicker, mock, mocker, mockingbird, monkey, mountebank, nearly reproduced, next best thing, not unlike, paper tiger, parrot, paste, pasticcio, pastiche, performer, personnel, perverted, pharisee, picture, pinch, pinch hitter, pinchbeck, plagiarist, plagiarized, playactor, poll-parrot, polly, polly-parrot, portrait, poser, poseur, pretended, pretender, provisional, proxy, pseudo, put-on, put-up job, quack, quacksalver, quackster, quasi, queer, relief, replacement, representation, representative, resemblance, resembling, reserve, reserves, ringer, rip-off, saltimbanco, sanctimonious fraud, second string, secondary, self-styled, semblance, sham, shammer, sheep, shoddy, sign, similar, similitude, simulacrum, simulated, simulator, smacking of, snide, snuffler, so-called, soi-disant, something like, spare, spares, spoof, spurious, stand-in, stopgap, straw man, sub, substituent, substitute, substitution, succedaneum, suggestive of, summer soldier, superseder, supplanter, supposititious, surrogate, swindle, symbol, synecdoche, synthetic, temporary, tentative, third string, tin, tinsel, titivated, token, twisted, unauthentic, understudy, ungenuine, uniform with, unnatural, unreal, utility, utility player, vicar, vicarious, vice-president, vice-regent, warped, whited sepulcher