WORD LISTS

Tricky Terms for April Fool's Day

Tue Mar 22 19:32:52 EDT 2016
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
You'd be a fool not to learn these words related to pranks, jokes, and deceit.

For more on the history of these words, read The Cunning, Risible Holiday of April Fool's Day.
antic
We watch her Little Rascal antics increasingly sure that something terrible is going to happen.
– The New York Times
bamboozle
Along the way GhostSecGroup has bamboozled the press, which is unfortunate, because it’s not clear that GhostSecGroup knows what it’s doing.
– Slate
bluff
Emily swallowed again and stepped back, sure her bluff was about to be called.
– Book Scavenger
buffoon
In the 1500s, this word evolved from a French word for a jester: buffoons paid the bills by making jokes, juggling balls, and performing other lowbrow feats. Nowadays a buffoon is just a doofus.
Advertisers can make galleries, whereas you and I still have to post every photo individually like buffoons.
– The Verge
cozen
I could forgive him had he not tricked you and deceived you, cozened you and flattered you--into this!
– Stanley John Weyman
cunning
To trick someone on April Fool’s Day, you have to be cunning. This is a word to describe the tricky and sly.
That sort of obfuscation may be a cunning way to sell used cars.
– Los Angeles Times
delude
Don’t delude yourself that you will one day get him to “see the light” and come around to your point of view.
– Time
dupe
“They paid the money. And then they found out it was a scam. They were upset. And they feel duped.”
– The Guardian
gullible
Lawyers for the brokers said the men didn’t actually help Mr. Hayes and instead were simply telling the gullible trader what he wanted to hear.
– The Wall Street Journal
hoax
Police say they knew it was a hoax, but they took Armaan into custody because he confessed to making up the threat.
– The Washington Times
hoodwink
Somehow, the advertising industry has hoodwinked us into thinking that we have to drop everything today and make purchases or … or what?
– Slate
hornswoggle
Our means are greater than we have been hornswoggled into thinking they are!
– Salon
idiot
The always popular term idiot has had a wild history, sliding between slang, medicine, and the law.
In January I deleted all the social media apps from my phone because they were turning me into an idiot.
– The Guardian
jest
To jest is to joke, though jest sounds fairly archaic these days. A person who jests is a jester: a rare word for the butt of a jester’s jibes is jestee.
The parties involved in the exchange told investigators they were just joking, and those investigators concluded the messages were written in jest.
– Los Angeles Times
mendacious
No one should be surprised if Russian forces renew their offensive in the coming days, while Moscow’s mendacious propaganda apparatus blames Ukraine.
– The Washington Post
prank
A few days later, the author of the dead-frog prank saluted her when he opened a desk drawer and found horse manure wrapped in wax paper.
– The Seattle Times
quip
This time Ruth heard me, but she must have thought I’d meant it as some kind of joke, because she laughed half-heartedly, then made some quip of her own.
– Never Let Me Go
risible
How do you write a play about the British royal family without making its members seem risible, banal or irrelevant?
– The New York Times
snooker
The Department of Energy snookered the media last week with a report that seems to show that its clean energy lending programs are profitable.
– Forbes
swindle
Last year, he allegedly swindled some two dozen people by selling them — for cash — phony pilgrimages to see Pope Francis in Philadelphia.
– U.S. News

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