phoniness
4
7.2
- noun
- /ˈfoʊniˌnəs/
- Informal
- At the same time, a noisy group of New Yorkers went past, complaining about the perceived phoniness of California's have-a-nice-day service ethic, apparently homesick for hostility.
- hate the phoniness
- phoniness and lies
- said, disdaining the phoniness
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Watch on YouTubeCon artists hate children because children can see through their phoniness, their fakeness.
- Con artists hate children because children can see through their phoniness, their fakeness.
- But I think you have to be really honest with yourself about just what a performance and what a what a piece of phoniness at all is really.
Examples
-
Romney tried to attack Obama from the left on this, and everything about it reeked of phoniness.
Blog text (26) -
I'd say that Romney's gaffes and obvious phoniness are indeed hurting him now and will hurt him a great deal more in the general elections.
Blog text (16) -
Yeah, I, I, I think it's because they see the phoniness of it.
-
I detect an air of phoniness about him.
Blog text (16) -
The real great evil (and many young people have told me this) is the phoniness within the church.
Blog text (31) -
That's just another aspect of his phoniness.
-
Thus, Holden Caulfield's disgust at the hypocrisy and "phoniness" of adult society was close to the feeling of many young Russians.
Academic text (2001) -
Pecksniff's phoniness emerges later when he strolls outside a church while Tom Pinch, a sincerely moral man, is inside playing the organ:
Academic text (2010) -
What Feynman hated worse than anything else was intellectual pretense, phoniness, false sophistication, jargon.
-
Many people were turned off by the phoniness of the celebrity's public persona.
Synonyms
6
6.8
A thing or action made to trick people into thinking it is real
4
5.6
Not showing true feelings when you speak or act
3
8.8
A way of hiding the truth by pretending to be less involved
2
5.8
A way of speaking or acting that is not true
2
6.0
Doing things quietly to trick people without them noticing
1
7.9
The state of not being real or true
1
6.9
Dishonest behavior by a person or group
1
9.2
Too much praise that tries to make people like you
1
7.2
A quality that makes something seem true when it is false
1
6.6
A state in which something is not real or genuine
1
8.5
Something that seems wrong, unsafe, or not honest
1
8.4
A false, not sincere way of speaking or behaving that hides true feelings
1
8.1
A feeling of being silly and fake that others do not take seriously
1
8.4
Act of showing a friendly face while hiding true feelings
1
7.9
The state of being fake and trying to trick people
1
9.1
A state of not being real or genuine
1
8.6
Hard to find or understand because it seems not real
A way of acting or speaking that does not feel sincere
Antonyms
How Fake
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Phoniness comes from phony, meaning 'fake' or 'not real'. One popular story says phony grew from an old word fawney, a fake gold 'ring' sold to trick people, so phoniness is the quality of being not sincere and not genuine.