Words / H / General

hoodwink

verb/ˈhʊdwɪŋk/

B2CEFR level
35/100Rarity: fairly common
InformalRegister

To deceive or trick someone into believing something false.

Investors were hoodwinked by fabricated growth figures.

Similar: dupe, deceive, con

Origin: From hood + wink, originally 'to blindfold'.

Topic: deception in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: deception