Scientists examining the skull of Piltdown Man, perhaps the most notorious scientific hoax ever perpetrated
31 October 2025
Hoax comes to us as a variant of hocus, which in turn is from the incantation hocus pocus, used in stage magic. The word hoax first appears in the mid eighteenth century as a verb meaning to ridicule. It evidently was current in university slang for several decades before seeing its way into print. The earliest example I have found is in a poem written by a student at Oxford c. 1750 that was published in 1781:
Am I, or am I not imprudent,
In begging you to accept “The Student?”
Here lies the point—if good no wonder—
But how you hoax us, if we blunder!
“Dame Oxford muster all her friends,
Each duteous son assistance lends;
All, all encourage him to print on,
Alumn’ Westminst’, et Alumn’ Winton’,
The Chartreau’ sons, and sons of Eton,
(Thanks for my frank, and rhyme, to Clayton—
No wonder poor ‘Syl. Urban’s’ beaten”—
This will be said, Sir, if we shine—
But if we write one faulty line,
How will the critics then bespatter
With foul reproaches Alma Mater!
And the gerund form appears in the 1788 second edition of Francis Grose’s slang dictionary:
HOAXING. Bantering, ridiculing. Hoaxing a quiz; joking an odd fellow. University wit.
The noun appears several times in Mary Ann Hanway’s 1800 novel Andrew Stuart. There is this in the third volume of the work:
When attended by witnesses, I claim you as my wife, the deceived Peer, thus outwitted, will be obliged to relinquish the pursuit, and consent to come down a pretty large sum, to stop the clamours of an injured husband; for he dares not abide the hoax of his noble colleagues in sin, the furious reproaches of his Laurina, or the award of the Court of the King’s Bench, who would assuredly give me swinging damages, as it would make the third time of his name being registered in the archives of Doctors Commons, for such high crimes and misdemeanours; thereby adding celebrity, by his puissant name, to the increasing catalogue of most noble and right honourable seducers!
And in the fourth volume, when it is suggested that the character Elmira Stuart might consent to marry the protagonist, her cousin:
“I should not be surprised,” added Mr. Blundel, smiling significantly at the company, “if from the events of this morning, she should avow her intention of still retaining the name of Stuart.”—A consciousness of the allusion made Andrew blush deeply; for which he was obliged to stand the hoax of the jovial party, who insisted that all should drink success to the happy idea of their host in a bumper.
The sense we know today, that of a joke, deception, or fraud played on a person is in place about the same time. From Ann Plumptre’s 1801 novel Something New:
Mrs. Harrison, over whose countenance the bright sunshine of serenity had been gradually spreading itself ever since the compliment paid her by the Doctor, was by this time so much recovered as to be capable of thinking of a hoax again. Perceiving therefore an admirable opportunity for one here presented, she whispered me, “Let’s have a little fun with the Doctor.” Then turning to him she said, “Why, Doctor, I think you mentioned that you had got the sermon in your pocket. I don’t see why we should wait for Sunday, ca’n’t [sic] you read it to us now?”
But words rarely arise ex nihilo; they come from somewhere, and hoax is no exception. It is a variation of hocus, a noun meaning a trick or deception or a verb meaning to execute such a deception. That in turn is from the phrase hocus pocus, extending a metaphor of stage magician’s illusion to a deception or scam.
We see the noun hocus in a 3 February 1654 letter by John Thurloe, spymaster for Oliver Cromwell and secretary to the council of state during the Protectorate:
That his hocus was to seduce the scilley multitude, and juggle theire meanes into his pocket, appeared by the continuall gatherings at home and abroade (which wee thinke, is one chiefe reason, why those Journymen, that factiously joyne with him, doe follow his steps in exclaymeing against the government) that they might procure to themselves such like profitts, and why wee judged him a perfect hypocrite, was then related.
Use of hocus as a verb dates to at least 1675, when it appears in Richard Head’s Proteus redivivus, or, The Art of Wheeling or Insinuation:
Again, they complain of their trusting too, as well as your Worships; where lies the difference then since you are both Creditors; and were you in their condition, I question, though you now complain of their Knavery, whether you would not be as very Knaves as themselves; you rail at them, and they again at others. The Mercer cries, Was ever Man so Hocuss'd? however, I have enough to maintain me here, and cries, Hang sorrow, cast away care.
Three years later, in 1678, Aphra Behn uses hocus as an adjective in her play Sir Patient Fancy, although that play would not appear in print for nearly a decade:
Alas! a Poet’s good for nothing now,
Unless he have the knack of conjuring too;
For ’tis beyond all natural Sense to guess
How their strange Miracles were brought to pass.
Your Presto Jack be gone, and come again,
With all the Hocus art of Legerdemain.
An open letter of 23 December 1701 addressed to newly elected members of Parliament continues the use of hocus:
All the Dust that is raised, with the stir and clutter of a War with France, is in earnest wholly design'd to blind your Eyes, and to keep you from searching. These State-Juglers wou’d by all means have you fix your Observation far enough from their Fingers; for there the slight is to be play’d, and a clear conveyance to be made of your Mony. So that when they set you upon your Guard against France, it were worth your looking about to see whether they are not then making a Property of you for themselves. But tho’ such Legerdemain Tricks and Stories may pass at Clubs and Coffee-houses, ‘tis hoped they will never be so fatally successful, as to make a Hocus of a House of Commons.
And John Floyer’s 1702 encomium to the virtues of a cold bath calls the belief that bathing in cold water is harmful a Guinea Hocus (i.e., a foolish hoax):
An Ingenious Man used to call this Fellow the Physick Town-Top, a Log of Wood, with a Brass Nose, that was lash’d and kept up by other Mens Mettle, more than his own, whose Excellency lies in a Row of silly worn out threadbare, chaw’d-over Stories and Jests, such as serve to make Fool’s laugh, and Wise Men shake their Heads. Such another Guinea Hocus as this, I was in Consultation with, as sort of a Town-Top too, tho’ not so very wooden, as the other.
This use of hocus would be picked by university students in the ensuing decades and transformed into hoax. The Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for hoax refers to doubts as to this origin that arise because of a lack of citations of the use of hocus in the eighteenth century. But the OED entry is old, penned in 1898, and yet to be updated. Nowadays, with the digitization of books and other material from that era, we find many examples of hocus in the eighteenth century. So this origin stands on firmer ground than the OED currently intimates.
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. hoax, n.
Behn, Aphra. “Prologue” to Sir Patient Fancy (1678). In Plays Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, vol. 4. London: Mary Poulson, 1724, 4. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Floyer, John. An Ancient Psychrolousia Revived: or, an Essay to Prove Cold Bathing Both Safe and Useful. London: Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, 1702, 297. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, second edition. London: S. Hooper, 1788, s.v. hoaxing, sig. P2. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Hanway, Mary Ann. Andrew Stuart, or the Northern Wanderer, London: Minerva Press, 1800, 3:319–20 and 4:107–08. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Head, Richard. Proteus redivivus, or, The Art of Wheeling or Insinuation. London: W. D. 1675, 322. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
A Letter to New Member of the Ensuing Parliament. London, 23 December 1701, 5. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1898, s.v. hoax, n., hoax, v., hocus, v., hocus, n., hocus-pocus, n., adj., & adv., hocus-pocus, v.
Plumptre, Anne. Something New: or, Adventures at Campbell-House, vol. 2 of 3. London: A. Strahan, 1801, 2:179. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Thurloe, John. “A Vindication against the Complaints of Mr. Rogers, address’d to Edward Dandy, Esq.” (3 February 1654). In A Collection of State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., vol. 3 of 7. Thomas Birch, ed. London: Thomas Woodward, 1742, 137. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
“To a Friend” (c. 1750). In J. Nichols, ed. A Select Collection of Poems with Notes, vol. 7. London: 1781, 316. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Image credit: John Cooke, 1915. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.