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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
Flint McColgan, Boston Herald, 7 Aug. 2025
Holmes, of course, was convicted in 2022 of fraud related to her bogus blood-testing technology.
—Benjamin Svetkey, HollywoodReporter, 6 Aug. 2025
Without the ridiculous chart and its bogus tariff rates, would those other governments have come to the table and made trade deals?
—Robert Goulder, Forbes.com, 28 July 2025
Remember, crooks can spoof caller IDs and plant bogus customer service information online.
—Susan Tompor, Freep.com, 8 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 20 Aug. 2025.
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bogus
adjective
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