bogus

Meaning

Adj

1. Counterfeit or fake; not genuine.
2. (slang) Undesirable or harmful.
3. (slang) Incorrect, useless, or broken.
4. Of a totally fictitious issue printed for collectors, often issued on behalf of a non-existent territory or country (not to be confused with forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).
5. Based on false or misleading information or unjustified assumptions.

Noun

1. (US, dialectal, uncountable) A liquor made of rum and molasses.
2. (US, archaic, dialectal, uncountable) Counterfeit money.

Synonyms

false

counterfeit

fake

sham

phony

mock

spurious

imitation

artificial

pretended

faked

phoney

feigned

pinchbeck

bastard

deceitful

shoddy

simulated

delusive

fraudulent

dummy

stagy

keep secret

not genuine

maintain secrecy

suppress the truth

artificially

cheating

conceal

cover up

cunning

deceive

deception

delude

embezzlement

falsehood

fictive

fraud

hide

keep back

lie

man-made

ostensive

pretense

prosthetic

pseudo

Translations

faux

fasullo

falso

κίβδηλος

falsificato

gefälscht

ψεύτικος

falsch

maquillé

trafiqué

falsifié

Schwindel

simuliert

simuliertes

fantôme

👻

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈbəʊ.ɡəs/

Etymology

First attested as an underworld term for an apparatus for creating counterfeit coins, then the coins themselves. Later, the word was applied to anything of poor quality. The newest use to mean useless is probably from the slang of computer hackers.
The origin is unknown, but there are at least two theories that try to trace its origin:
* From Hausa boko (“to fake”). Since bogus first appeared in the United States, it may be possible that its ancestor was brought there on a slave ship.
* From criminal slang as a short form of tantrabogus, a 19th-century slang term for a menacing object, making some believe that bogus might be linked to bogy or bogey (see bogeyman). In this sense, Bogus might be related to Bogle – a traditional trickster from the Scottish Borders, noted for achieving acts of household trickery; confusing, but not usually damaging.