dupe1
/djuːp
/verb [with object]
Deceive; trick: the newspaper was duped into publishing an untrue story...
- I'd give this CD away to charity, but then of course, some sucker would be duped into paying for it.
- An elderly Swindon woman has narrowly escaped being duped into sending money to a dubious get-rich-quick scheme.
- Shoppers are being duped into handing over thousands of pounds by to a gang of street vendors who claim to be collecting money for children's wheelchairs.
Synonyms
deceive, trick, hoodwink, hoax, swindle, defraud, cheat, double-cross, gull, mislead, take in, fool, delude, misguide, lead on, inveigle, seduce, ensnare, entrap, beguile
informal con, do, sting, gyp, rip off, diddle, swizzle, shaft, bilk, rook, bamboozle, finagle, pull the wool over someone's eyes, pull someone's leg, pull a fast one on, put one over on, sell a pup to, take to the cleaners
North American informal sucker, snooker, stiff, euchre, bunco, hornswoggle
Australian informal pull a swifty on
archaic cozen, sharp
rare mulct
noun
A victim of deception: men who were simply the dupes of their unscrupulous leaders...
- In a sense these ignorant dupes are as much victims of the terrorists as their targets are.
- But they were neither victims nor dupes, as some historians have suggested.
- The consumer may also be a dupe, the victim of exploitation by powerful interests.
Synonyms
victim, gull, pawn, puppet, instrument;
fool, simpleton, innocent
informal sucker, stooge, sitting duck, sitting target, soft touch, pushover, chump, muggins, charlie, fall guy
British informal mug
North American informal pigeon, patsy, sap, schlemiel, mark
Australian/New Zealand informal dill
British informal, dated juggins
Derivatives
dupable
/ adjective ...- You expect twists in the plot, not too hard to get your head around, and you expect some nasty villains along with some dupable cops and lovable rogues.
- Crop circles are formed by mischievous human beings who dupe the easily dupable into believing there is some extra-natural or supernatural cause.
- As many of us have come to understand, there are few creatures more easily dupable than a western intellectual desperate to demonstrate his tolerance for some foreign nonsense.
duper
- For, they are the ‘dupers’ of our hopes and beliefs.
- So it caught the dupers and is still running a deflationary strategy to squeeze excess money out of the game's economy.
- If the audience guess right then they get £10,000 shared amongst them; if they guess wrong the successful duper gets all the money for himself.
dupery
/ noun ...- Some of the editors continued to take his hoax essay at face value even after he had revealed his dupery.
- What proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?
- Let us agree, however, that wherever there is no forced option, the dispassionately judicial intellect with no pet hypothesis, saving us, as it does, from dupery at any rate, ought to be our ideal.
Origin
Late 17th century: from dialect French dupe 'hoopoe', from the bird's supposedly stupid appearance.
‘A victim of deception’, dupe is from dialect French dupe ‘hoopoe’ (see cuckoo), from the bird's supposedly stupid appearance.
Rhymes
dupe2
/djuːp/verb & noun
Short for duplicate, especially in photography. [as verb]: how to dupe 35 mm slides on to 35 mm film [as noun]: black-and-white dupes...
- You could dupe however many copies you wanted, right?
- How about burning a mixed CD of the wackiest, weirdest songs of all time, then duping it and giving copies to all your friends?
- During the fights in the film, he had taken risks in doing all the stunts on his own, without the use of a dupe or a body double.