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:
- He brought some bogus documents to the meeting and couldn’t defend himself.
- We didn’t pay her because the estimate was bogus.
- The scammers used a bogus website to get victims’ information.
- The theory was bogus.
Other synonyms for bogus include fake, forged, artificial, deceptive, misleading, feigned and pseudo.