Word of the Day : April 1, 2019

hoodwink \HOOD-wink\ verb

Definition

: to deceive by false appearance : dupe

Did You Know?

A now-obsolete sense of the word wink is "to close one's eyes," and hoodwink once meant to cover the eyes of someone, such as a prisoner, with a hood or blindfold. (Hoodwink was also once a name for the game of blindman's buff.) This 16th-century term soon came to be used figuratively for veiling the truth. "The Public is easily hood-winked," wrote the Irish physician Charles Lucas in 1756, by which time the figurative use had been around for quite a while—and today, the meaning of the word hasn't changed a wink.

Aired April 1, 2019

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