How to Use hoax in a Sentence

hoax

1 of 2 verb
  • Many Canadians began to feel as if they had been hoaxed.
    — David Frum, The Atlantic, 27 Dec. 2025
  • False news articles were deliberately spread across our feeds to hoax us.
    — Joanna Stern, WSJ, 8 Nov. 2018
  • The effort, dubbed #ThinkBeforeYouPost, reminds would-be pranksters that hoax threats are not a joke and could result in federal or state charges.
    — Karen Kucher, sandiegouniontribune.com, 10 June 2018
  • Kansas State University First day of classes interrupted by Hale Library hoax.
    — Stepheny Price, FOXNews.com, 31 Aug. 2025
  • Six universities, including the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, had hoax active shooter call threats.
    — Kirsten Fiscus, Nashville Tennessean, 29 Aug. 2025
  • After trying to hoax journalists with Project Veritas, Loomer moved to direct confrontations with public figures in recent years, disrupting interviews and news conferences.
    — Terry Spencer, orlandosentinel.com, 19 Aug. 2020
  • Robby Soave delivers radar on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggesting that President Obama’s administration orchestrated Russiagate collusion hoax in 2016.
    — The Hill, 25 July 2025

hoax

2 of 2 noun
  • She was the victim of a cruel hoax.
  • The bomb threat is probably a hoax, but we should still evacuate the building.
  • The call was confirmed to be a hoax.
    — Stepheny Price, FOXNews.com, 31 Aug. 2025
  • McGuire blasted all the adults who were in on the hoax.
    — David K. Li, NBC news, 28 Oct. 2025
  • Another call that turned out to be a hoax.
    — Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN Money, 21 Sep. 2025
  • No threat was found and the call was determined to be a hoax.
    — Brieanna J. Frank, USA TODAY, 3 Mar. 2023
  • The claim turned out to be a hoax, officials said.
    — Maura Murphy, NBC news, 10 Oct. 2025
  • Locke denied the story was a hoax.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Mar. 2026
  • Even when a hoax is debunked, the damage lingers.
    — Philip Jankowski, Dallas Morning News, 2 Jan. 2026
  • Decades of debate have followed on whether the film was a hoax.
    — Andy Rose, CNN Money, 8 May 2026
  • The call was fake, a malicious hoax.
    — Charles Minshew, AJC.com, 7 Apr. 2026
  • And that's the hoax that has existed for months and months and months.
    — NBC news, 21 Dec. 2025
  • So, this is a Democrat hoax that never ends.
    — ABC News, 28 Dec. 2025
  • This is a Democrat hoax that never ends.
    — ABC News, 7 Sep. 2025
  • This is a Democrat hoax that never ends.
    — NBC news, 21 Dec. 2025
  • Trump has derided climate change as a hoax for many years.
    — James Speyer, New York Daily News, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Trump has personally called the emails part of a hoax.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Trump has called recent attention to the case a hoax.
    — Julie K Brown, Miami Herald, 18 Oct. 2025
  • Because if this was indeed a cruel hoax.
    — Fernando Cervantes Jr, USA Today, 22 Aug. 2025
  • Any chance at all this could be a terrible hoax or joke that someone is playing?
    — David Begnaud, CBS News, 18 Mar. 2023
  • His hoax succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
    — Scott Neuman, NPR, 1 Oct. 2025
  • The justice's sister was targeted by a bomb threat, which turned out to be a hoax.
    — Susan Page, USA Today, 8 Sep. 2025
  • If there's no information at all, that's a big clue that the giveaway is a hoax.
    — Kimberley Mok, Treehugger, 7 Feb. 2023
  • At the scene, police learned that the report was a hoax and that no one had been assaulted.
    — cleveland, 1 Nov. 2022
  • She has since been charged in connection with the kidnapping hoax.
    — Dateline Nbc, NBC News, 5 Sep. 2023
  • Just because the president calls climate change a hoax, doesn’t make it so.
    — Bill Ritter Jr, Denver Post, 27 Sep. 2025
  • Upon his death in 2002, it was revealed that this was a hoax.
    — Matt Blitz, Popular Mechanics, 14 Mar. 2023
  • Cruz is not alone in wanting to pull her son out of school after the hoax, Bardwell said.
    — Deanna Pan, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Both were sentenced to over a decade in prison for their roles in the company's blood-testing hoax.
    — Barbara Ortutay, ajc, 16 Dec. 2022
  • The hoax appears to play off of fears of software used to spy on victims’ phones, known as spyware.
    — Ben Goggin, NBC News, 9 Oct. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hoax.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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