Word of the Day
: August 4, 2013hoodwink
playWhat It Means
: to deceive by false appearance : dupe
hoodwink in Context
By making it look like a fun, enjoyable privilege instead of an exhausting chore, Tom Sawyer hoodwinks Ben Rogers into helping him whitewash Aunt Polly's fence.
"In Moliére's classic comedy, the religious fraud Tartuffe has hoodwinked rich merchant Orgon and is poised to marry his host's teenage daughter, to seduce his lovely wife and to take over his gullible patron’s fortune-unless someone stops him." - From an article in The Edmond Sun (Oklahoma), June 25, 2013
Did You Know?
A now-obsolete sense of the word "wink" is "to close one's eyes," and "hoodwink" once meant to cover the eyes of someone, such as a prisoner, with a hood or blindfold. ("Hoodwink" was also once a name for the game of blindman's buff.) This 16th-century term soon came to be used figuratively for veiling the truth. "The Public is easily hood-winked," wrote the Irish physician Charles Lucas in 1756, by which time the figurative use had been around for almost a century and a half. Over two hundred and fifty years later, this meaning of the word hasn't changed a wink.
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Name That Synonym
What synonym of "hoodwink" rhymes with "dozen"? The answer is …
