Did you know?
Bogus Has a Long History
In her 1840 novel A New Home—Who’ll Follow?, author Carolina Kirkland wrote about a scandal affecting the fictitious frontier town of Tinkerville, whose bank vaults were discovered to contain “a heavy charge of broken glass and tenpenny nails, covered above and below with half-dollars, principally ‘bogus.’ Alas! for Tinkerville, and alas, for poor Michigan!” Alas indeed. Bogus (an apparent U.S. coinage) was first used in the argot of wildcat banks (like the one in Tinkerville) as a noun referring to counterfeit money. It later branched out into adjective use meaning “counterfeit or forged.” Although the noun is now obsolete, the adjective is still used today with the same meaning, and is applied not only to phony currency but to anything that is less than genuine, making it part of a treasury of similar words ranging from the very old (sham) to the fairly new (fugazi).
Examples of bogus in a Sentence
CNN Money,
30 June 2026
Prosecutors say Guo raised over $1 billion through bogus ventures, funding a lavish life of luxury apartments, yachts, race cars and designer goods.
—
Michael R. Sisak,
Los Angeles Times,
30 June 2026
From May 2022 to August 2023, prosecutors allege, Mareik had Patricia Anderson of West Hills sign off on bogus prescriptions for patients Anderson had not seen or that weren’t medically necessary, amounting to $270 million billed to Medi-Cal and $178 million of which Medi-Cal paid out.
—
Andrea Klick,
Daily News,
23 June 2026
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Fox News Digital on Monday that the FBI has looked into numerous ransom demands since the beginning of the investigation, with some being bogus and others with the potential to be real.
—
Adam Sabes , Michael Ruiz,
FOXNews.com,
23 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for bogus
Cite this Entry
“Bogus.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bogus. Accessed 5 Jul. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
bogus
adjective
