Fool me once: the magical origin of the word hoax

Several are on President Trump’s personal list: climate change, Russiagate, and the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. History, by contrast, offers clearer, less politically fraught cases: the “missing link” Piltdown Man, the Cottingley Fairies photographs, the publication of Hitler’s forged personal diaries and even Balloon Boy.

Frauds, swindles, cons, scams, and deceptions — collectively known as hoaxes.

But there’s more than meets the eye. With Halloween just a month away, NPR’s Word of the Week series delves into the curious, magical backstory of hoax.

And poof! We have hocus pocus

The word “hoax” sprang like a rabbit out of a hat from the magician’s incantation hocus pocus, according to Dave Wilton, the editor of Wordorigins.org. “We know pretty much certainly that the term Hocus Pocus was the stage name of a magician by the name of William Vincent, who was operating … around the 1620s.”

Where Vincent got the phrase, however, is less certain. One theory suggests that it is a deliberate corruption of the Latin used as part of the Catholic Eucharistic liturgy, “Hoc est enim corpus meum” or “This is My body.”

Though speculative, the idea is not out of the question. Vincent, who was English, lived during the religiously charged Thirty-Years War (1618 to 1648) when Anglican England, which indirectly aided the Protestant side in the conflict, would have been steeped in anti-Catholic sentiment.

Thomas Ady, the 17th century author of a skeptical treatise on witchcraft A Candle in the Dark appears to refer to Vincent without naming him directly. Ady describes him as a man who excelled at stage trickery during the time of King James who called himself “The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus … because … at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders …”

The phrase blends authentic Latin with some playful nonsense — an effort worthy of Harry Potter. For instance, in Latin, vade celeriter jubeo means “I command you to go quickly.”

But Wilton doubts the religious origin story. “It doesn’t quite match the Latin and the Catholic liturgy. So it’s really hard to say how anyone could get hocus pocus” from that, he says.

Jim Steinmeyer, author of the book The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art, says he remembers the phrase hocus pocus from his childhood. “We would see magicians who would say to the audience, ‘now everyone say the magic words.'”

“It’s kind of goofy … [but] you can also see that it’s successful because … it’s also tying those words into a surprise. Something amazing is going to happen when you hear those words,” he says.

How did hocus pocus transform from the stage name of a magician (and it should be said, an accomplished juggler, according to Ady) to a byword for the entire craft?

It may have simply been just a matter of marketing, according to Steinmeyer, who is also executive editor of Genii magazine. “What you see there is 17th-century branding.” Hocus Pocus, a.k.a. William Vincent, Steinmeyer says, “repeats his name for the audience, makes his name part of the formula that accomplishes the magic.”

The stage performer seems to have grabbed every opportunity for self-promotion and “Hocus Pocus became a shorthand for the world of magic. The performer was forgotten, but the phrase endured,” Steinmeyer says.

Vincent may even have been the author of one of the first books on magic, Hocus Pocus Junior: The Anatomie of Legerdemain (1634). Although the author is officially unknown, at least one scholar has asserted that it’s Vincent.

A short history of hoaxes

Getting from “hocus pocus” to ” hoax” wasn’t much of a leap, Wilton says. “Language is primarily spoken and oral … hocus [to] hoax. That’s a very easy transition.”

Merriam-Webster says hoax first appeared as both a verb and a noun around the same time, circa 1800.

Although it has its origin as a simple lie or deceit, today hoax has the connotation of a grander deception, says Aja Raden, author of The Truth About Lies: A Taxonomy of Deceit, Hoaxes and Cons.

“It’s easier to convince someone you own an island than it is to convince them you own a condo,” Raden says.

Or an entire country, as it turns out.

In the 1820s, Gregor MacGregor announced the discovery of Poyais, a lush and prosperous paradise in Central America. “MacGregor embarked on an extensive infrastructure project but needed settlers and investors,” notes Historic UK. He lured prospective colonists from London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, selling shares and raising the enormous sum of £200,000 in a single year. He even published a detailed guidebook, tempting hopeful adventurers with visions of a new life in Poyais.

“The thing is, Poyais didn’t exist. He made it up,” Raden says. Hundreds of would-be settlers set sail for the fictional land. Some died. The others landed in an uninhabited stretch of Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast.

The massive deception worked for the same reason that all well-crafted hoaxes do, Raden says. “Trying to debunk a widely believed lie just entrenches it further. Every time I say, ‘Poyais isn’t real,’ all you hear is ‘Poyais, go live there.'”

Fast forward a century and Raden can point to another example as a deliberate piece of “fake news.” In 1917, “H.L. Mencken made up the story that [President] Millard Fillmore put the first bathtub in the White House,” she says.

The famed journalist’s literary lark quickly gained currency, being reprinted and taken as the truth. He later admitted: “My motive was simply to have some harmless fun in war days.”

“Mencken said he didn’t expect anyone to take his article seriously, but his motives were hardly as innocent as he made them out to be,” according to The Museum of Hoaxes. “The article was a deliberate hoax designed to test the gullibility of readers and other journalists. His hoax succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.”

Apparently unwilling to throw the baby out with a good tall tale, decades after the fake story, President Harry S. Truman was “still proudly showing off” the infamous White House bathtub to visitors, because Raden says, “he just liked believing it.”