decoynoun [ C ]
uk/ˈdiː.kɔɪ/us/ˈdiː.kɔɪ/something or someone used to trick or confuse other people or animals into doing something, especially something dangerous:
They used a girl hitch-hiker as the decoy to get him to stop.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Faking & pretending
- a wolf in sheep's clothing idiom
- affect
- assume
- believe
- bluff
- changeling
- charlatan
- feign
- fraud
- go through the motions idiom
- guise
- impostor
- play at sth
- play possum idiom
- play sth out
- play-acting
- pose as sb
- professed
- purport
- quack
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decoy
verb [ T ] uk/dɪˈkɔɪ/us/dɪˈkɔɪ/