as in devised
to create or think of by clever use of the imagination
parents who were always trumping up little projects for their children to do around the house
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as in invented
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Recent Examples of trumped-up
Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 22 Nov. 2023
Erdogan’s government has thrown (or attempted to throw) a number of key political opponents into jail on what critics say are trumped-up, spurious charges.
—Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 10 May 2023
Literary Hub, 19 Aug. 2025
Verb
The charge was clearly trumped-up, but Yundi was immediately taken off all Chinese stages and media and prevented from going abroad.
—Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 22 Nov. 2023
Erdogan’s government has thrown (or attempted to throw) a number of key political opponents into jail on what critics say are trumped-up, spurious charges.
—Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 10 May 2023
Adjective
Although the woman-alien’s powers were trumped up to comedic effect, Estelle could not help but see that beneath its B-movie veneer, Devil Girl from Mars tapped into a looming anxiety that was palpable all around.
—Literary Hub, 19 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for trumped-up
Verb
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The most visible plans are those devised by the same international custodians who have engineered postwar order elsewhere in the Middle East.—
Mohammed R. Mhawish,
New Yorker,
14 Oct. 2025
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That is, unless faster methods are devised than today’s chemical rockets.—
Chris Young,
Interesting Engineering,
13 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Dan concocted a farmhouse ale made with 1850s roots.—
Scott Dochterman,
New York Times,
10 Oct. 2025
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Maybe the purposefully ambiguous coda was concocted to prove some sort of Rashomon-style truth-is-subjective point.—
David Fear,
Rolling Stone,
9 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Ciattarelli’s statements calling out the president for making unproven allegations have been echoed by GOP lawmakers.—
Ashleigh Fields,
The Hill,
9 Oct. 2025
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Acetaminophen’s link to autism is unproven.—
Elizabeth Preston,
New York Times,
9 Oct. 2025
Verb
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The tall design is constructed of Italian suede and leather that’s been made water-resistant and jazzed up with buckles at the calf, to secure the comfy and warm shearling interior.—
Gretta Monahan,
Boston Herald,
16 Oct. 2025
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The building was constructed in 1910, and the apartment’s most recent tenant, who moved out in 2022, had lived there for forty years.—
Naaman Zhou,
New Yorker,
16 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Jason Clarke is a force as Alex, whose booming charm hides fraudulent business dealings and a growing opioid addiction, while Arquette is Emmy-worthy as the long-suffering but demanding Maggie.—
EW Staff,
Entertainment Weekly,
17 Oct. 2025
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The analyst added that the fraudulent nature of the borrowers hints at a unique situation rather than an underlying systematic issue.—
Lisa Kailai Han,
CNBC,
17 Oct. 2025
Verb
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The continent that invented and spun out the internet from its first-class research institutions now risks standing by as US founders scale with ease.—
Jan Hammer,
Fortune,
18 Oct. 2025
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After at least half a decade of acute concern about the way that platforms such as Instagram may affect young people, as well as intense debate about how best to keep kids safe online, Meta has arrived at a label that was invented in the 1980s because parents were upset by movies such as Gremlins.—
Kaitlyn Tiffany,
The Atlantic,
17 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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And while OpenAI’s defenders could chalk that up to an isolated or even made-up incident, within 24 hours of the GPT-5 launch Altman was doing damage control, seemingly caught of guard by the bad reception.—
Allison Morrow,
CNN Money,
14 Aug. 2025
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Because a lot of things on reality TV are made-up situations and scenarios to provoke reactions and all of that stuff.—
Ryan Morik,
FOXNews.com,
2 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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At Comedy Central, Colbert rose to prominence playing a slightly exaggerated version of Bill O’Reilly and other unapologetically mendacious Fox News pundits from the George W. Bush years.—
Alan Sepinwall,
Rolling Stone,
18 July 2025
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The true story reveals both how freedom of speech first came to be conceived of as a mechanism for truth, an antidote to falsehood, and the foundation of all liberty—and that, ironically, this new and powerful theory was itself a deliberately mendacious fiction.—
Fara Dabhoiwala,
Harpers Magazine,
4 June 2025
Cite this Entry
“Trumped-up.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/trumped-up. Accessed 20 Oct. 2025.
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