Did you know?
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
Kristine Phillips, IndyStar, 4 July 2025
An indictment accused Singh and others of using his business, MDP Products and Services, Inc., to file over $14.1 million in bogus claims to Medicare between 2022 and 2023.
—Jay Weaver, Miami Herald, 1 July 2025
Clint Eastwood wanted Deadline to get out the word that a recent interview purportedly done with him is absolutely bogus.
—Mike Fleming Jr, Deadline, 2 June 2025
That same day, a correspondent arrested in Azerbaijan while working for one of those sister networks — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges his bosses consider bogus.
—David Folkenflik, NPR, 21 June 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 11 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
bogus
adjective
Share