Saturday, December 1, 2012

Hornswoggle

horn-swog-gle (ˈhɔːnswɒɡ(ə)l)

verb
1. to get the better of; to cheat or swindle; to hoodwink, humbug, bamboozle.*
Nolan Daniels hornswoggled more than 450 thousand Facebook users with a poorly photoshopped photo and the hope of the hopeless.

Synonyms: ambush, artifice, bamboozle, blind, bluff, casuistry, cheat, chicanery, circumvention, con, concealment, conspiracy, conundrum, cover, deception, decoy, delusion, device, disguise, distortion, dodge, double-dealing, duplicity, equivocation, evasion, fabrication, fake, falsehood, feint, forgery, fraud, game, gimmick, hoax, illusion, imposition, imposture, intrigue, invention, jape, machination, maneuver, perjury, plot, ploy, pretense, ruse, snare, stratagem, subterfuge, swindle, trap, treachery, wile.

*Hornswoggle is an American colloquial term that originated in the Wild West. A cow herder, who has allowed a cow to escape by wiggling free of his or her lasso, is said to have been hornswoggled. This was probably a mixed reference to a bull's horns and said wiggling. 


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