snake oil
Noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004
Noun
snake oil (uncountable)
- (idiomatic) A fraudulent, ineffective potion or nostrum; panacea.
- A traditional Chinese medicine used to treat joint pain.
- A type of 19th-century patent medicine sold in the United States that claimed to contain snake fat, supposedly a Native American remedy for various ailments.
- (idiomatic) Any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality.
- French: poudre de perlimpinpin
- German: Quacksalberprodukt
snake oil (snake oils, present participle snake oiling; past and past participle snake oiled)
- (slang) To dupe or con.
- 1995, Nancy Owen Nelson (ed.), Private Voices, Public Lives:
- And this is particularly so for many of our women students who have been hustled and snake-oiled to deny the validity of their intellects.
- 2013, Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge, Vintage 2014, p. 23:
- Before she had a chance to deal with her hangover, he was on the phone snake-oiling her into the first of what would be many ill-fated fraud cases.
- 1995, Nancy Owen Nelson (ed.), Private Voices, Public Lives:
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004