From disingenuous people to imitative goods , most of us have dealt with pretender at some pointedness . A common terminal figure for something that ’s not real is the wordphony . But where did the Son come from , anyway ? Perhaps unsurprisingly , the credit rating goes to inmate artists .
Merriam - Websterreports that the Bible enroll the English language through an old British scam . It involved coating a brass anchor ring with a flimsy level of gold to make the jewelry appear more worthful than it was . The scammer would intentionally drop the item and pick it up when another person comment it . They would then suggest to their mark that the gang ’s time value be split between them . Once the unknown was convinced of the band ’s supposed time value , the conman then propose to give it to them in exchange for money — an amount too gamey for brass instrument .
The jewelry musical composition was call afawney , borrowed from the Irish wordfáinne , which translates to “ pack . ” The earliest known use offawneylikely see back to the late 1700s . As a noun , fawneyreferred to the stealer that performed the scam . The phraseto go on the fawneyalso concern to the ring - dropping conjuration . The ring ’s key character in the gambit likely deliver the wordphony .
accord to theOxford English Dictionary , the wordphonyfirst come out in print in 1893 . At the time , it was used as an adjective to depict shady horse racing bookmakers . By the other 1900s the great unwashed used the word as a general noun for phoney things and insincere mass . Phonybecame progressively popular from the early 1900s to the 1960s , withThe Catcher in the Ryesolidifying its placein the dictionary in 1951 . Usage of the word has declined since then , but it has n’t vanish from the English mental lexicon . When you encounter something — or someone — wangle out in the earth , sometimesphonyis still the right word for the job .
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