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Bogus Has a Long History
In her 1840 novel A New Home—Who’ll Follow?, author Carolina Kirkland wrote about a scandal affecting the fictitious frontier town of Tinkerville, whose bank vaults were discovered to contain “a heavy charge of broken glass and tenpenny nails, covered above and below with half-dollars, principally ‘bogus.’ Alas! for Tinkerville, and alas, for poor Michigan!” Alas indeed. Bogus (an apparent U.S. coinage) was first used in the argot of wildcat banks (like the one in Tinkerville) as a noun referring to counterfeit money. It later branched out into adjective use meaning “counterfeit or forged.” Although the noun is now obsolete, the adjective is still used today with the same meaning, and is applied not only to phony currency but to anything that is less than genuine, making it part of a treasury of similar words ranging from the very old (sham) to the fairly new (fugazi).
Examples of bogus in a Sentence
The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 30 May 2025
It was produced by Google’s Veo 3, similar to extant bogus news anchor content already proliferating the Internet.
—Michael Ashley, Forbes.com, 30 May 2025
For a few years, according to federal regulators, Cash App didn't have a live customer support line at that time and crooks filled the gap by providing information online for a bogus hotline.
—Susan Tompor, USA Today, 27 May 2025
Half a century after Trump started selling the illusion of exclusivity—through casinos, mail-order steaks, and a bogus university—his family has finally discovered what people will pay for most exorbitantly: access to the top of the U.S. government.
—Evan Osnos, New Yorker, 26 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for bogus
Cite this Entry
“Bogus.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bogus. Accessed 5 Jun. 2025.
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bogus
adjective
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