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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
Kate Nishimura, Sourcing Journal, 30 July 2025
Her bogus claim could have — and should have — been refuted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
—Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 25 July 2025
The job was done using bogus lawsuits and the power of the presidency.
—Thomas G. Moukawsher, MSNBC Newsweek, 23 July 2025
Chavez previously ran a ketamine clinic and allegedly submitted a bogus prescription in the name of a former patient to secure the drug.
—Tracy Wright, FOXNews.com, 23 July 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 2 Aug. 2025.
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bogus
adjective
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