Fool me once: the magical origin of the word hoax
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Several are on President Trump's personal list: climate change , Russiagate , and the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. History, by contrast, offers clearer, less politically fraught cases: the "missing link" Piltdown Man , the Cottingley Fairies photographs, the publication of Hitler's forged personal diaries and even Balloon Boy .
Frauds, swindles, cons, scams, and deceptions — collectively known as hoaxes.
But there's more than meets the eye. With Halloween just a month away, NPR's Word of the Week series delves into the curious, magical backstory of hoax.
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And poof! We have hocus pocus
The word "hoax" sprang like a rabbit out of a hat from the magician's incantation hocus pocus, according to Dave Wilton, the editor of Wordorigins.org .
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