- dupe
- dupe vb Dupe, gull, befool, trick, hoax, hoodwink, bamboozle mean to delude a person by underhand means or for one's own ends.Dupe suggests unwariness or unsuspiciousness on the part of the person or persons deluded and the acceptance of what is false as true, what is counterfeit as genuine, or what is worthless as valuable{
the public is easily duped by extravagant claims in advertising
}{he was so softhearted that he was constantly being duped into helping impostors
}{William had too much sense to be duped— Macaulay
}Gull implies great credulousness or a disposition that lends itself to one's being easily imposed upon or made a laughingstock of{if I do not gull him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed— Shak.
}{if the world will be gulled, let it be gulled— Burton
}{gull who may, they will be gulled! They will not look nor think— Browning
}Befool stresses the effect on the victim, that of being made a fool of in his own eyes or in those of others; it does not so strongly suggest a temperamental weakness in the victim as the preceding words, nor so clearly imply an intent to delude on the part of the agent, as most of the words that follow{confess themselves befooled by the candidate, his personable appearance, and his promises
}{innocent philosophic critics, too easily befooled by words— Ellis
}{pictures supplant one another so swiftly as to befool the eye with the illusion of continuity— S. H. Adams
}Trick implies the intent to delude on the part of the agent by means of a stratagem or ruse, by wiles, or by fraud; it suggests the deliberate intent to deceive, but it need not imply a base end. It may, for example, imply illusion as the end{a skillful dramatist tricks the spectators into accepting the impossible as probable
}{a magician's success depends partly upon his ability to trick his audience
}It more often suggests deliberate misleading and the use of cunning or craft{pills are coated with sugar or chocolate in order to trick children into taking them
}{he was tricked out of his savings by the promises of large returns on an investment
}{the people felt that they had been tricked into approval of the project
}{it enables some lawyers to trick us into bringing in the wrong verdict— Reilly
}Hoax may imply indulgence in tricking as a sport or for the purpose of proving how gullible a person or persons can be when a skillful imposture or fabrication is presented to them; it more often suggests a fraud intended to deceive even the most skeptical and often, also, to work for one's own profit or personal advantage{after having been hoaxed for the past 40 years, British scientists have discovered that the jaw and teeth of the world-famous "Piltdown man" belong to a modern ape— Farmer's Weekly
}{a get-rich-quick scheme intended to hoax the public
}{did Mark Twain intend to hoax people by his Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, published without his name and as the work of one of her contemporaries?
}Hoodwink connotes either a deliberate confusing intended to blind the mind of another to the truth, or, less often, self-delusion arising from one's inability to distinguish the false from the true{he will not be hoodwinked by sentimental platitudes into doing things that are against reason
}{to hoodwink everybody by pretending to conform— Cabell
}{since she'd hoodwinked your uncle, she thought she could pull the wool over my eyes, too— Kenneth Roberts
}Bamboozle usually implies the use of such methods as cajolery, humbug, or illusion to dupe or confuse; the word is often used interchangeably with trick, hoax, or hoodwink, but it is less definite or fixed in its implications{bamboozled into a belief that he was a great man
}{what Oriental tomfoolery is bamboozling you?— Newman
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
