phony

Americans are awash in scams: phony UPS texts, AI-generated voices of loved ones in trouble, spoofed emails tricking city governments.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026

While Heller was built on phony history, it reflected a genuine, hard-fought shift in public understanding.

From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2026

One of the timeworn accusations against Holden Caulfield is hypocrisy: This guy calls everyone else phony, but he’s just as phony!

From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2026

Even today, students can tell you that the biggest phony in the book is Holden himself.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026

Just like kids all over the country, we ran around collecting as much candy as we could, but we had to do so in this phony situation.

From "Three Little Words: A Memoir" by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Soft know-it-alls from the city and phonies of any stripe receive rough treatment in his shows, such as the llama farmer from California who gets thrown under a Montana cattle guard in “Yellowstone.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025

It’s a satire on the book world and Hollywood adaptations as well as wry drama about a Black college professor and author fuming about phonies and the commodification of Black narratives.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 17, 2023

Mr. Musk trashed Mr. Zuckerberg’s Instagram as a dwelling for fakers and phonies in a Wednesday evening post to Twitter.

From Washington Times ● Jul. 6, 2023

The few who object are marked as fools, phonies or outright villains.

From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2022

He was a man trying to create greatness, and the phonies were too ignorant to recognize anything beyond their own limitations.

From "Hole in My Life" by Jack Gantos

Angelenos can spot a phony from far away — and Spencer, you’re turning out to be phonier than the fake drama on any of the television shows you ever appeared in.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 10, 2026

Arthur Julian, a writer on “F Troop,” noted that “real audiences sound phonier than the laugh track. Sometimes they freeze up and act unnatural.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026

But the screenplay, by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke, can’t stand that level of scrutiny, and the closer we get to the actors mouthing their clunky, mock-allegorical dialogue, the phonier they seem.

From Slate ● Oct. 9, 2019

Corny Collins, the dance-show host, should be good-looking in a phonier, slicker way than Steven Beckingham is here, for instance.

From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2010

The phonier it got, the more she cried.

From "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger

But in the past those moments were often the phoniest, as though she’d entered a kind of stage-school zombie state.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2017

When it came to decorating his own new home, he threw out all the rules of good taste and embraced the phoniest of fakes.

From New York Times ● Apr. 10, 2014

What would be the phoniest thing of all would be for me to all of the sudden not be his friend.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 26, 2011

NEWPORT, Wales -- So it was, inevitably and predictably, the phoniest of conflicts.

From Golf Digest ● Sep. 30, 2010

“That was the phoniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

From "Glitch" by Laura Martin

She was indicted for inducing her client, convicted Kidnaper John William Irwin, to testify falsely in an effort to prove that Sinatra phonied up the kidnaping as a publicity stunt.

From Time Magazine Archive

Every time I go anywhere now it's all phonied up.

From Time Magazine Archive