hoax

It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century.

Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax,--which was an inconceivable hypothesis,--or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey.

The Tories were at first delighted, but when they discovered the hoax became correspondingly indignant and Defoe was set in the pillory, and (for a short time) imprisoned.

Probably a translation of the celebrated Moon hoax, written by Richard A.

"This thing," I exclaimed, "is a contemptible falsehood- a poor hoax - the lees of the invention of some pitiable penny-a-liner - of some wretched concoctor of accidents in Cocaigne.

Now, at last, I saw the grim humor of the method they had adopted to do me this great honor, but that there was any hoax in the reality of the title they had conferred upon me was readily disproved by the sincerity of the congratulations that were heaped upon me by the judges first and then the nobles.

I recalled the excesses of my last crossing, and I prepared for some vast hoax at the last moment.

I suspect a hoax is intended, but the instigators of it little knew whom they had to deal with.

Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveller, it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact; and there was a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly questioned.

To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty--it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame de Cintre.

Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense.

Almost all electricians--the men who were supposed to know--pronounced the telephone an impossible thing; and those who did not openly declare it to be a hoax, believed that Bell had stumbled upon some freakish use of electricity, which could never be of any practical value.