to foist off
1
9.4
- phrasal verb
- /fɔɪst ɔf/
:
imponer
- Hmm, perhaps we need a law that makes the lawmakers financially responsible for any unfunded liabilities they try to foist off on the taxpayer, as well as any amount of spending beyond existing revenue.
- tries to foist off
Examples
-
Wasn't your feeling even a little bit of "well, gee, I was right last year after all, but they foisted off on me some additional bit?
Blog text (12) -
She was careful not to foist off the defective merchandise as brand new during the sale.
-
This responsibility cannot be foisted off onto the private sector, even though the private sector also plays an important role.
Blog text (19) -
Attempts to foist them off on other countries seem to be going nowhere.
Blog text (12) -
Who, as a boy, had been foisted off at every opportunity on his wealthy relatives by an overly ambitious mother.
Fiction book (1999) -
Some might argue that it's a good thing, seeing it was obvious that BHO never bothered reading the bill he wanted to foist off on you in two weeks, a couple of months ago.
Blog text (8) -
And I'm not just talking about the unedited OCR scans of old books foisted off on the public as deserving of premium prices.
Blog text (2) -
The salesman tried to foist off a fake Rolex watch as a genuine luxury item.
-
After clearing out his attic, Jim decided to foist off his old furniture on anyone willing to take it.
Synonyms
18
6.9
To make something or someone look real when they are not
2
9.0
To trick someone by making something false seem valuable
1
9.4
To trick someone into accepting something false or less valuable
1
8.8
To give someone a fake or low quality thing and pretend it is real
To trick someone into buying a fake or unwanted thing
How Deceptive
Surface Forms
Morphology
foist + off
The verb's meaning ('to impose or pass on something by deception') is carried by 'foist', and the particle 'off' contributes a sense of getting rid of or passing away, so a learner who knows both constituents could plausibly infer the MWE's sense. However, 'foist' is rare and the collocation is somewhat idiomatic rather than fully compositional, so the relation is not completely transparent to an average B1 learner.
Etymology
The phrasal verb foist off comes from the image of forcing an unwanted thing onto someone; foist means to push or pass it to another person and off shows it is being moved away from you. That's why it means 'to pass something unwanted onto someone, often by tricking them'.