hocus

Mentalist and theater artist Vinny DePonto, a bearded, soft-spoken man with gentle eyes, doesn’t want to bamboozle us with hocus pocus.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 18, 2022

“What he did for those 20 hours is hocus pocus,” Richards said in urging jurors to reject consideration of the image.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 15, 2021

“We’ve always been interested in how music impacts the mentally ill, but some scientists shun the idea of researching this because it’s been viewed as hocus pocus,” he said.

From Washington Times ● Oct. 6, 2018

“Dew manipulated the slides. The one clue we couldn’t figure out was the placard, but they played hocus pocus with the placard. We were given something that had been altered.”

From The Guardian ● Sep. 30, 2017

Secrecy, mystery, all manner of childish hocus pocus, were used to establish these primitive ideas; and the weight of that black past is upon its yet.

From The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

He is Moore hocused for the American market.

From The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 Volume 23, Number 2 by Various

It must have been working as sweet and steady as ever, all the time it was Inverted, except that, being inside out, it had hocused the direction finders.

From The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

Realizing this almost gave my mind stage fright, but I was too fagged to be hocused by self-consciousness.

From The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

These rascals had given him hocussed rum, and had got him away, probably tied to one of the horses.

From The Missing Link by Edward Dyson

I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed.

From Escape, and Other Essays by Arthur Christopher Benson

"The lump of stuff you left here hocussed one—it was a toss-up—luck was on my side—that one carried them—slept like death—long while hunting—found them under his pillow at last."

From It Is Never Too Late to Mend by Charles Reade

He used to be hocussed with water of an evil taste, and wake in a clean shirt.

From Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang

Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out. 

From The Uncommercial Traveller by Charles Dickens

The fortune-tellers have been consulted about them; dreamers have dreamed the winners; and many an underhand attempt, sometimes including the hocussing of men or horses, has been made to corrupt the sport.

From Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul by T. G. (Thomas George) Tucker

Then he became absorbed in steering, and sternly rejected all further consideration of his gift; he would have neither hand nor part in hocussing French agriculturalists posing as mariners.

From The Admirable Tinker Child of the World by Edgar Jepson

"The operation—combining equal parts of hocussing, overcharging, and direct robbery—and facetiously christened by bush landlords `lambing down.'"

From Austral English A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia by Edward Ellis Morris

The Doctor espoused the moral hocussing system, and Feargus took up the bludgeon for physical force.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, November 13, 1841 by Various

There is no chance of hocussing a horse, or laming him, or bribing a stable boy, or squaring a jockey.

From Hard Pressed by Fred M. (Fred Merrick) White