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
ABC News, 30 Mar. 2026
Trump’s bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him has been disproved time and again — in court, recounts, research and investigative reporting.
—Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Mar. 2026
In Minnesota, a man was sentenced to life in prison for plotting the murder of a real estate agent in part by luring her to a bogus showing.
—Tim Stelloh, NBC news, 29 Mar. 2026
That was the result of angry partisans taking seriously Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims.
—Steven Greenhut, Oc Register, 27 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for bogus
Cite this Entry
“Bogus.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bogus. Accessed 1 Apr. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
bogus
adjective
