How to Use snake oil in a Sentence

snake oil

noun
  • My job is to be nice and sell snake oil.
    — Literary Hub, 5 Sep. 2025
  • Scams evolved from the snake oil salesman at the door to mail to email.
    — Vijay Pande, Fortune, 13 June 2023
  • The elixir of carbon-free growth turns out to be snake oil after all.
    — Rupert Darwall, National Review, 22 Jan. 2018
  • But is this just swapping one kind of snake oil with another?
    — Audrey Clare Farley, The New Republic, 3 Jan. 2022
  • In my experience, most are like snake oil—all talk and no growth.
    — Deana Bianco, SELF, 27 Nov. 2019
  • People are scared right now, and that's a great time for snake oil salesmen to move in for the strike.
    — Arkansas Online, 3 Oct. 2020
  • There are so many hacks online, like those who drop-ship fake products or sell snake oil services.
    — Rolling Stone Culture Council, Rolling Stone, 25 Oct. 2022
  • But there are worse things to lie about than visions of things getting better—my snake oil was hope.
    — Literary Hub, 27 Apr. 2026
  • What is actual breakthrough science and what is the same old snake oil?
    — Ted Johnson, Deadline, 12 Mar. 2026
  • For skeptics, this is a combination of two kinds of snake oil.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 14 Dec. 2020
  • Some will swallow the elixir narrative and thrive, others will smell snake oil.
    — Logan Jenkins, sandiegouniontribune.com, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Shallow people focus instead on style, and on the glib talk of the snake oil salesman.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 8 July 2024
  • Her purchase evidently did not yield snake oil.
    — Tamim Alnuweiri, InStyle, 7 Jan. 2026
  • Her purchase evidently did not yield snake oil.
    — Tamim Alnuweiri, InStyle, 27 Feb. 2026
  • Drugs no better than snake oil — but deemed safe — could be sold to desperate patients at a profit.
    — Adam Feuerstein, STAT, 20 June 2018
  • For every legit product on the market, there are also gallons of snake oil.
    — Jon Bier, Rolling Stone, 12 Dec. 2024
  • The world of guitar tone is almost as driven by myths and snake oil as ancient Greece itself.
    — Parker Hall, WIRED, 22 Jan. 2023
  • The enclave earned its name from snake oil peddlers and far more unsavory characters.
    — Hunter Boyce, ajc, 25 July 2022
  • The chaos of a pandemic is ripe territory for snake oil salesmen.
    — Sy Mukherjee, Fortune, 30 June 2020
  • Accessories are where the vast majority of audio snake oil shows up.
    — Parker Hall, Wired, 5 June 2021
  • One fueled by hype, speculation and a dash of digital snake oil.
    — Larry Light, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024
  • But research on the placebo effect suggests that even snake oil can have benefits for those who believe.
    — Markham Heid, Time, 5 Oct. 2017
  • This is a story of snake oil charlatans and fake prophecies, of a beauty queen whose husbands keep ending up dead.
    — Leah Sottile, Rolling Stone, 16 June 2022
  • Deregulation, in turn, paves the way for the return of these jobs for financial snake oil salesman.
    — Rajesh D. Nayak, Slate Magazine, 22 Dec. 2017
  • His snake oil helped take the United States’ right-wing political fringe to dizzying heights.
    — Monitor Editors, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 Sep. 2017
  • Don’t buy the snake oil of simple development and the cloud, and don’t buy a pig in a poke—test the product in real-world settings.
    — Forbes, 17 Aug. 2022
  • As the options increase, how to separate the quality stuff from what’s really just snake oil?
    — Laura Neilson, Vogue, 23 Jan. 2019
  • Fake coronavirus miracle cures Quacks have been hawking fake cures since the dawn of time, and nobody wants to fall for the old snake oil trick.
    — Kim Komando, USA TODAY, 30 Apr. 2020
  • Oz, by contrast, carries on him the markers of a salesman hawking wares to a nouveau-riche easily tempted by snake oil.
    — Jill Filipovic, CNN, 26 Oct. 2022
  • And the piecemeal comfort and convenience options that abound in the competitors can feel like a whole lot of snake oil salesmanship.
    — Robert Duffer, chicagotribune.com, 19 Mar. 2018

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

Last Updated: