‘Bogus’ doesn’t mean ‘big’

Bogus is one of those English words that do not mean what they sound like.

Bogus, an adjective,  doesn’t mean ‘massive’ or ‘big’; it simply means ‘not genuine or true’, ‘counterfeit’, ‘illegal’, etc.

On the whole, it describes something that is made to look like what it’s not.

Examples:

  1. He brought some bogus documents to the meeting and couldn’t defend himself.
  2. We didn’t pay her because the estimate was bogus.
  3. The scammers used a bogus website to get victims’ information.
  4. The theory was bogus.

Other synonyms for bogus include fake, forged, artificial, deceptive, misleading, feigned and pseudo.

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