hoodwink

verb hood·wink \ ˈhu̇d-ˌwiŋk \

|Updated on: 6 Jul 2018

Examples: hoodwink in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of hoodwink

hoodwinked; hoodwinking; hoodwinks

transitive verb

1 archaic : blindfold

2 obsolete : hide

3 : to deceive by false appearance : dupe

people who allow themselves to be hoodwinked by such promises

—

hoodwinker

noun

See hoodwink defined for English-language learners

See hoodwink defined for kids

hoodwink was our Word of the Day on 08/04/2013. Hear the podcast!

Examples of hoodwink in a Sentence

Don't let yourself be hoodwinked into buying things you don't need.
Tom Sawyer famously hoodwinked the other boys into thinking there was nothing more enjoyable than whitewashing a fence.

Recent Examples of hoodwink from the Web

All that thieves need to do is hoodwink Philadelphia’s Records Department and its gullible and often careless deed room.

— craig r. mccoy, Philly.com, "A Philadelphia story: Falsely declared dead, home stolen and no one will help," 29 June 2018
The list of high-profile people Holmes managed to hoodwink is almost as eye-popping as her deceits.

— julia belluz, Vox, "How Silicon Valley got played by Theranos," 15 June 2018
The question is: will a team move up, or could a savvy front office try to hoodwink Kings general manager Vlade Divac.

— peter dawson, star-telegram, "NBA Mock Draft 4.0: Mavs pass on Mo Bamba, opt for Mizzou superstar instead," 6 June 2018
There could come a time when Danny Ainge’s trading of Jeff Green three years ago will be hailed as another of his celebrated capers, with the Memphis Grizzlies added to the roll call of the hoodwinked.

— New York Times, "Look Who Answered LeBron’s Call: Jeff Green, the Former Celtic," 28 May 2018
Buc-ee's counsel has argued that competitor Choke Canyon intentionally used a cartoon animal in its logo to confuse drivers into exiting the highway and provided similar items and services inside the travel center to further hoodwink clients.

— gabrielle banks, Houston Chronicle, "Buc-ee’s, Choke Canyon making final plugs to jury in trademark case," 21 May 2018
Seeing that audience hoodwinked set me up for a life of wondering: Is an artist obligated to reveal how much of his or her creativity is being assisted by technology?

— david pogue, Scientific American, "Should Artists Reveal How Much They Let Technology Make Creative Choices?," 1 July 2017
Now some people who were hoodwinked and suffered damage to their vision are suing the e-commerce giant.

— aaron pressman, Fortune, "Data Sheet—AMD’s New Ammo in Battle Against Intel," 31 Aug. 2017
The media narrative now is that the pharmaceuticals lobby spent big to hoodwink Congress to pass a bill Members didn’t understand.

— the editorial board, WSJ, "A Bipartisan Drug Cartel?," 24 Oct. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'hoodwink.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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. Two hundred and fifty years later, this meaning of the word hasn't changed a wink: "The American public has been hoodwinked and fleeced," wrote Theodore Wolff, for example, in the Iowa State Daily on July 6, 2006.