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

“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

It knows it’s always being upstaged by the hocus pocus of its own medium.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 8, 2016

Cut portmanteau-straps; waylay old women; hocus pocus; any thing you like.

From Walladmor: And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. by Thomas De Quincey

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

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

But if he allows hisself to be hocussed in that way, I don't know but what I shall be ashamed.

From Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

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

From Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang

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

You have hocussed an innocent widow; and I find you here in my apartment, for whose use I pay you in stamped money, searching my wardrobe, and your hand—shame, sir!—your hand in my very pocket.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Here, you’d better do the throwing, or you’ll be swearing I’ve hocussed the coin,” said Dawes, with a dry smile.

From The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley by Bertram Mitford

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 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

"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 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