hoax
/həʊks//hoʊks/
hoax verb: to deceive (someone) by making them believe something that has been maliciously or mischievously fabricated.
Verb
hoax (third-person singular simple present hoaxes, present participle hoaxing, simple past and past participle hoaxed)
- To deceive (someone) by making them believe something that has been maliciously or mischievously fabricated.
Noun
hoax (plural hoaxes)
- Anything deliberately intended to deceive or trick.
- The phone call to the police about a tiger in a tree turned out to be a hoax.
- The news story about the pop singer coming to town, unfortunately for his fans, turned out to be a hoax.
- Synonyms:
- canard
hoax meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
hoax in Urdu
- چکما, فریب, جھانسا, جل, مکر, شرارت
hoax in Bengali
- প্রতারণা, ধাপ্পাবাজি, তামাশা, ঠাট্টা
hoax in Malayalam
- തമാശയ്ക്കായുള്ള തട്ടിപ്പ്, പരിഹാസം, ഹാസ്യകര വഞ്ചന
hoax in Kannada
- ಕೀಟಲೆಯ ತಂತ್ರ, ವಿನೋದದ ವಂಚನೆ, ತಮಾಷೆಯ ವಂಚನೆ, ಮಂಕು, ಕಯ್ತ
More languagesFewer languages
- hoax in Tagalog
- talimangmang
- hoax in Malay
- olokan, olok-olok
- hoax in Indonesian
- hoaks
- hoax in Vietnamese
- lừa đảo, chơi khăm
Examples of hoax in a sentence
- The article should be speedy deleted, as a blatant and obvious hoax.
- He called the Epstein story a “hoax,” his go-to move for maximally damaging accusations.
- It was later found that the suspect device was a hoax and not a viable explosive.
Synonyms of hoax
Forms of hoax
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | hoaxes |
| present participle | hoaxing |
| past participle | hoaxed |
| past | hoaxed |
| Noun | |
| plural | hoaxes |
Origin of hoax
Reportedly a form of hocus. Possibly from hocus-pocus or Latin iocus (“joke”). Compare hokey.
Words formed from hoax
Words that rhyme with hoax
1 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about hoax
- What does hoax mean?
- Hoax means to deceive (someone) by making them believe something that has been maliciously or mischievously fabricated.
- What is hoax in Urdu?
- Hoax in Urdu is چکما, فریب, جھانسا. See Hoax meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is hoax?
- Hoax can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce hoax?
- Hoax is pronounced /həʊks/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of hoax?
- The past tense of hoax is hoaxed.
Words near hoax in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hoax (page history and authors); hoax (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Hoax (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hoax (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hoax (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-hoax.ogg, en-us-hoax.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hoax.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hoax. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.