From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishhoaxhoax /həʊks $ hoʊks/ noun [countable] 1 TRICK/DECEIVEa false warning about something dangerous a bomb hoax hoax calls (=telephone calls giving false information) to the police2 TRICK/DECEIVEan attempt to make people believe something that is not true an elaborate hoax
Examples from the Corpus
hoax• To everybody's great relief, the bomb scare turned out to be a hoax.• The UFO sightings were revealed to be a hoax.• At the school she discovered the call had been a hoax.• Did Mr Hawthorne stand to gain from a hoax?• Their vivid colouring is a hoax.• I got an email about another computer virus, but I'm pretty sure it's just a hoax.• The rumor was that I had invented him to perpetrate a hoax and had actually written the books myself.• A hoax is a hoax, of course, but it seems different when the phoney says he is Balenciaga's grandson.• Had Neil Armstrong really walked on the moon or was it a magnificent hoax?• What was really wonderful was that the paper swallowed the hoax whole.• The hoax devices were destroyed in controlled explosions by army bomb disposal experts, using remote-controlled vehicles.bomb hoax• Note the offence of making a bomb hoax call etc. under section 51 Criminal Law Act 1977.elaborate hoax• This was nothing but an elaborate hoax perpetrated by her in revenge for all the suffering I had caused her.• It was still not clear last night whether the tapes were an elaborate hoax.Origin hoax (1700-1800) Probably from hocus; → HOCUS-POCUS 