1
as in tricked
to cause to believe what is untrue
I bluffed the interviewer into believing that I could really speak French and thus would be the perfect person to serve in the newspaper's Paris bureau
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in pretended
to present a false appearance of
the basketball player bluffed a shot, then passed instead
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Recent Examples of bluffed
Any time the Patriots succeed with a new blitz or bluffed blitz in the first quarter, offenses expect to see it again later in the game.
—
Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald, 17 Jan. 2026
On the second interception, Simmons said Delaware bluffed as if an all-out blitz was coming before falling back into coverage and making the pick.
—Walter Villa, Miami Herald, 21 Sep. 2025
Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald, 17 Jan. 2026
On the second interception, Simmons said Delaware bluffed as if an all-out blitz was coming before falling back into coverage and making the pick.
—Walter Villa, Miami Herald, 21 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for bluffed
Verb
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Experts say such scam operations in Cambodia and elsewhere have cheated people around the world out of billions of dollars and tricked people from many countries to work in them under slave-like conditions.—
Sakchai Lalit,
Los Angeles Times,
3 Feb. 2026
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Wiles barely could make the tight final left-hand turn that had tricked Monsen.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
30 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Then, an experimenter presented the bonobo with two empty, transparent cups and pretended to pour juice from an empty pitcher into each cup.—
Amarachi Orie,
CNN Money,
9 Feb. 2026
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Korea’s Kim Seon-yeong and Sweden’s Isabella Wranå pretended their brooms were air guitars.—
Zack Pierce,
New York Times,
4 Feb. 2026
Verb
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While everyone could be more easily fooled now, don’t be the one remembered for delivering bad intel.—
Tribune Content Agency,
Baltimore Sun,
8 Feb. 2026
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Don’t be fooled by its petite, easy-to-carry silhouette, though, because the bag boasts plenty of space to stow your essentials and beyond.—
Kyra Surgent,
InStyle,
6 Feb. 2026
Verb
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My favourite spot, though, might well have been Paradiso, the see-and-be-seen après-ski spot lodged into the side of a mountain in the Corviglia ski area, some 6,000 feet up, for which Badrutt’s assumed management in early 2022.—
Condé Nast,
Condé Nast Traveler,
7 Feb. 2026
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There are some issues with properties that residents who moved to Portage in the last 15 years or so assumed always flooded, but many of those problems were caused by the city using slag sand when salt supplies were low to address ice on streets.—
Doug Ross,
Chicago Tribune,
6 Feb. 2026
Verb
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And don’t be deceived by Saturday’s sunny skies as the high will be 32 with wind chills as low as 9 degrees.—
Amanda McCoy,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
30 Jan. 2026
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Challengers should give Marylanders the option to choose a new direction and remove the need to confront the painful reality that they were deceived.—
Torrey Snow,
Baltimore Sun,
14 Jan. 2026
Verb
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This test simulated 10 years of real-world operation of a heating system and was completed without failures or the wear and tear of safety-critical components.—
Ameya Paleja,
Interesting Engineering,
5 Feb. 2026
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The metal-insulator model is important because, in most cases, it cannot be simulated on a classical computer.—
IEEE Spectrum,
IEEE Spectrum,
4 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Bluffed.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bluffed. Accessed 14 Feb. 2026.
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