Phony (pronounced foh-nee)
(1) Not
real or genuine; fake; counterfeit; imitation; hoax.
(2) An
insincere or pretentious person.
1890s: Phony is thought a US vernacular alteration
of the British fawney, the word for a
gilded brass ring used in a confidence trick called the "fawney
rig". In this scam, the trickster
drops a ring (or a purse containing some valuables) and runs to pick the item
up at the same time as the victim who spies it on the ground. The trickster asserts that the found treasure
should be split between them and the victim who "found" the item,
convinced now of its value, is persuaded give the con artist some money in
order to keep the phony item. The
alternative (mostly UK) spelling is phoney.
Actual origin of fawney seems
to be a descriptor of a finger-ring, a word brought to England by the Irish,
derived from the Irish fáinne (ring)
and it’s likely the Irish Diaspora which introduced it to the United
States. Although it’s a bit murky, fáinne may be derived from the same
Indo-European root (hehno) as the
Latin ānus (ring) which existed also
in Old French and first noted in English in 1658.
Speculative
alternatives have been suggested. An
early twentieth-century notion thought it from a use of a telephone to lure
victims to false appointments in order that a criminal operation might be
carried out, further conjecturing connections either with phoo, a term of contempt, or funny.
No etymological evidence was offered.
Another origin, widely circulated by the popular press, says the word is
derived from the name of a manufacturer of cheap jewellery, a Mr Forney and
it’s likely the authors mistook fawney
for the sadly maligned chap. The OED
agrees phony originates in colloquial American English, but dates it from an
1893 reference to the horse-racing slang, “phony bookmakers,” quoting The Chicago Tribune. The OED defines them as “unofficial
bookmakers issuing betting slips on which they do not intend to pay out.”
Most
interesting (and least likely) is the pondered derivation from Ancient Greek
via Latin with an origin said to date from the Punic Wars. During these wars, the Romans used the phrase
“Punic Faith” which implied treacherousness and dishonesty and Poeni is the Latin word from which is
derived Punic, itself from the
Ancient Greek Phoeni. While it seems the Phoenicians were regarded
by the Romans as an untrustworthy lot, two-thousand-odd years passed before
phony emerged in English and there’s no support for the theory. Apparently unrelated too is the linguistic
coincidence that in Welsh, poeni means
“to hurt, to ail, to pain, to worry, to fret, to pester, to plague, to bother
or to nag”.
Fake, phony and truthful hyperbole
The Trump presidency saw a spike in the use of phony. Donald Trump (b 1946; US President 2017-2021) liked the word, using it to against both opponents and any news outlet at all critical, taking alliterative delight in describing Elizabeth Warren (b 1949, United States Senator for Massachusetts since 2013) as “a phony Pocahontas…” after her DNA test revealed the Native American bloodline she’d claimed was less than a small fraction of one percent. In general use, he prefers the punchier fake news but also uses phony, often as a synonym but also as an analogue for negative. In his 1978 book The Art of the Deal (which if Trump didn’t entirely write, he at least influenced), he noted the effectiveness of “…an innocent form of exaggeration…” which he called “…truthful hyperbole”, something his many critics noted was well suited to the age of social media and claimed was but a variation of the Nazis’ rule of propaganda that small lies are ineffective but big lies work well. That’s most often attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933-1945) but is actually from the first volume of Adolf Hitler’s (1889–1945; German Chancellor 1933-1945) Mein Kampf, Goebbels memorably using the phrase years later in a critique of British wartime propaganda. Goebbels was however well aware of the limitations of the use of untruths and in The Art of the Deal, Trump also cautioned there were limits to what can be done with variations of the phony, not so much what but for how long: “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."
Others like it too. Mitt Romney (b 1947, US senator (Republican) for Utah since 2019), thinking Trump had no chance of winning the presidency, labelled him “…a phony and a fraud” adding “…his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.'' They did (briefly) make up, apparently without “multiple choice” Mitt having to drop to his knees (although that was never confirmed or denied), the former president endorsing Romney’s successful 2018 mid-term campaign to replace Orrin Hatch (1934-2022) as a senator for Utah.
Trump’s endorsement for the Senate seat was however little more than a pat on the head for a well-behaved vassal. A little after Trump won the 2016 election, Romney, rather as King Henry IV (1050–1106; King of Germany from 1054-1105, Holy Roman Emperor from 1084-1105) made his pilgrimage to Canossa to seek forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States 1073-1085), turned up at the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York to pay homage and, essentially, beg for a job. “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump” Romney gushed after dinner with Trump at the hotel’s Jean-Georges restaurant. “We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.” Clearly Romney wanted to be secretary of state, the US’s chief diplomat. That would have been an interesting assignment, given that in decades of public life Romney had shown scant evidence of original thought, so he’d have been Trump’s errand-boy, parroting a foreign policy not of his own creation, most observers concluded his desire for an important job outweighed his dislike for Trump. What he thought being the international emissary for a man he’d earlier condemned as “neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president” either didn’t cross his mind or didn’t matter because he just wanted an important job. Trump missed the opportunity to appoint Romney which was a shame because he’d have been a fine addition to a cabinet which might have included Rudy Giuliani as attorney-general, Sarah Palin as treasury secretary, Newt Gingrich as defense secretary and Ted Cruz as CIA director. Something like that, truly a ministry of all the talents, would have been good to watch.
Serial phoney tans on Lindsay Lohan, the preferred term being "fake tan". In fairness however, the redheads and other freckled folk should avoid the sun and use spray-on and other tanning products in preference to any form of radiation, natural or artificial. An even more desirable option is to embrace the pale ascetic, and alluring look and one which offers glittering opportunities to contrast with dark fabrics, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.
In A Brief History of Time (1988), English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) used the concept of "imaginary time" as a conceptual tool to illustrate certain aspects of his theories but imaginary covers of Time magazine are something different. Imaginary time has been misunderstood and, given the mysteriousness of much of which it's used to describe, that's perhaps understandable. What it is is a mathematical representation of time used to build models of the relationship between special relativity and quantum mechanics, expressed using equations written with what mathematicians call imaginary numbers. For most of us, it replaces one impenetrable idea with another but between consenting mathematicians and cosmologists in the privacy of their labs, it's a hoot.
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