HOCUS-POCUS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Hocus-pocus

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/hˈoʊkəs-pˈoʊkəs/ Listen

noun

Hocus-pocus n.

A term used by magicians or conjurers in pretended incantations.

A juggler or trickster. (Archaic)

A magician's trick; a cheat; nonsense.

Obfuscating talk or elaborate but meaningless activity intended to hide a deception or to obscure what is actually happening; verbal misrepresentation intended to take advantage of you in some way.

Synonyms: trickery, slickness, hanky panky, jiggery-pokery, skulduggery, skullduggery.

verb

Hocus-pocus v. t. To cheat. (Colloq.)

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Etymology of 'Hocus-pocus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hocus-pocus" Quotes from Famous Books

... Fantomas is an invention, a more or less original one, I am ready to admit, but an invention of not the least practical interest. Just an invention of the detectives, this Fantomas; or, it may be of the journalists only, who have made the gaping public swallow this hocus-pocus pill—this enormous pill!" The lieutenant stared at Fandor defiantly. "And let me add, I speak from knowledge, for, up to a certain point, I know all ...

— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... that I don't feel any animosity against them; I would much rather be fighting the French; but they, by a sort of hocus-pocus, are our allies," remarked Green. "In reality we are not making war on the Russian people; we are expressly ordered not to injure any of their property; our business is only ...

— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... selves, while the other papers gnashed their teeth and looked on. Nor was the whole truth told by a long way, but a garbled version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a doting father who never consented to it—and such a hash-up and hocus-pocus as would have made a ...

— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... mineral on earth is mud. Diamonds and rubies are just nowhere by comparison. I don't mean weight for weight, of course—mud is 'cheap as dirt,' to buy in small quantities—but aggregate for aggregate. Quite literally, and without hocus-pocus of any sort, the money valuation of the mud in the world must outnumber many thousand times the money valuation of all the other minerals put together. Only we reckon it usually not by the ton, but by the acre, though ...

— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... source of the sound now. It came from inside the black walls of Layroh's tent, pitched there in its usual isolation on a slight rise fifty yards from the sleeping group. Foster grunted disgustedly to himself. More of Layroh's scientific hocus-pocus! The man seemed to go out of his way to add new phases of mystery to this crazy expedition of his through the barren ...

— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells

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