foxed

Verb

fox (third-person singular simple present foxes, present participle foxing, simple past and past participle foxed)

1. (transitive) To trick, fool or outwit (someone) by cunning or ingenuity.
   • I see a number of gallants every where, whoſe incomes come in yearely by ſet numbers, but runne out daily, ſans number. […] And when I ſee them often foxed, me thinke the Proverbe ſutes thoſe ſutes, what is the fox but his caſe? I ſhould thinke them to be Eutrapelus his enemies, whom he cloathed...1680, Arthur Warwick, Spare-Minutes, or Resolved Meditations and Remediated Resolutions
2. To sham, to dissemble.
   • He was not foxing. No, no: he was sick really.1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC
3. (transitive) To confuse or baffle (someone).
   • This crossword puzzle has completely foxed me.
4. (intransitive) To act slyly or craftily.
5. (dated, transitive) To cheat or rob.
   • Have you any news of Miriam? As I have had no reply to my delicately worded epistle, I can only presume that you foxed me with the wrong address, and that you are yourself already engaged to be married to her.Quoted in 2000, John Lewes, Jock Lewes: Co-founder of the SAS (page 132)
6. (intransitive) To discolour paper. Fox marks are spots on paper caused by humidity. (See foxing.)
   • The pages of the book show distinct foxing.

See all 44 meanings of fox