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

Imam Hasan, who is based at the Al-Emaan Centre in Bromley, Kent, said ruqya is misunderstood and rejected myths of "spells, magic wands or hocus pocus" being involved.

From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2021

I don’t speak in delphic tongues or offer holy absolution or perform shamanic hocus pocus; I really don’t do much of anything but sit there, listen and try to tell the truth.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 12, 2018

Recent geographers," said Asabri, "unwilling to take any statement for granted, have, after prolonged and scientific investigation, discovered that this idea is hocus pocus.

From It, and Other Stories by Gouverneur Morris

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

He is Moore hocused for the American market.

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

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

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

From The Uncommercial Traveller by Charles Dickens

She went down at the distance like a filly that's been hocussed.

From Aladdin of London or, Lodestar by Sir Max Pemberton

"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

These pieces would deceive any amateur and quite a few experts: they fairly hocussed me till I turned on the glasses.

From A Drake by George! by John Trevena

When Ghanim saw her, he knew that some one had played her false and hocussed her; so he pulled her out of the chest and laid her on the ground with her face upwards.

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 02 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

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 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

"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

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