hocus-pocus

What does hocus-pocus mean?

hocus-pocus means "verbal misrepresentation intended to take advantage of you in some way".

How many syllables are in hocus-pocus?

hocus-pocus has 4 syllables and divides as ho-cu-s-po-cus under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for hocus-pocus?

Close synonyms include trickery, slickness, hanky panky, jiggery-pokery, skulduggery. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hocus-pocus a common word?

hocus-pocus is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for hocus-pocus come from Princeton University’s WordNet. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.