From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishphonypho‧ny /ˈfəʊni $ ˈfoʊ-/ adjective x-refthe usual American spelling of phoney► see thesaurus at false
Examples from the Corpus
phony• His outsider image, to start with, is phony.• Many such claims in the Middle East are phony.• On many other cuts, though, he goofs around in a self- deprecating way that actually seems phony.• There was, however, nothing phony about his powers of connoisseurship, and looking at pictures with him was fascinating.• Was the card a phony card?• a phony driver's license• a phony Italian accent• Was the number a phony number?• He has scheduled a phony parliamentary election for October 15, and his own term expires next year.• People have been peddling phony weight-loss elixirs since before the turn of the century.Origin phony (1800-1900) Perhaps from fawney “brass ring used for deceiving people” ((18-19 centuries)), from Irish Gaelic fáinne “ring” 