bogus

CEFRC1

/ˈbəʊ̯ɡəs/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Not genuine or true; fake.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Incorrect, useless, or broken.

Examples

  • Sami opened a bank account with a bogus Egyptian ID.

  • He was arrested for trying to cash a bogus check at the bank.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • /ˈboʊ̯ɡəs/

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Undesirable or harmful.

  2. Counterfeit or fake; not genuine.

  3. Of a totally fictitious issue printed for collectors, often issued on behalf of a non-existent territory or country (not to be confused with forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).

More examples

In context

  • This is completely bogus.

  • They have printed bogus despatches, and unhesitatingly used what they knew was bogus matter in a way to mislead even newspaper men.

  • Bogus stamps are labels made to deceive stamp collectors. Many bogus stamps were made prior to 1900 when some had names of imaginary countries.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The detective quickly exposed the document as blank after noticing forged signatures.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

First attested as an underworld term for an apparatus for creating counterfeit coins, then the coins themselves. Later, the word was applied to anything of poor quality. The newest use to mean useless is probably from the slang of computer hackers. The origin is unknown, but there are at least two theories that try to trace its origin: * From Hausa boko (“to fake”). Since bogus first appeared in the United States, it may be possible that its ancestor was brought there on a slave ship. * From criminal slang as a short form of tantrabogus, a 19th-century slang term for a menacing object, making some believe that bogus might be linked to bogy or bogey (see bogeyman). In this sense, Bogus might...