10 February 2022
Phony, also commonly spelled phoney, means something not genuine, a fake, a sham. It is an Americanism, dating to the end of the nineteenth century, but it has its origin in the Irish fáin(n)e, meaning ring, as in a piece of jewelry.
The journey from jewelry to a false article is by way of a confidence game, the fawney-rig, that started to be practiced in the late eighteenth century. George Parker’s 1781 A View of Society and Manners in High and Low Life describes the scam:
THE FAWNEY RIG.
A RING-DROPPER; a fellow has gotten a woman’s pocket, with a scissars [sic], some thread, a thimble, and a housewife with a ring in it, which he drops for some credulous person to pick up.
As soon as he has got some gudgeon to bite at his hook and to pick up his pocket, he claims halves for being present, and they begin to examine it.
The Fawney says, “I dare say some poor woman has lost her pocket. Good gracious! here’s a ring, and her wedding-ring too, for here’s a poesy;” then reads, “Love me and leave me not,” or some such thing.
He then comes the stale story of, “If you will give me eight or nine shillings for my share, you shall have the whole.”
If you accede to this and swallow his bait, you have the ring and pocket, worth about sixpence; for tho’ the ring itself cost as much, yet the intrinsic value of it is not a halfpenny.
Queer as this rig may appear, there is a large shop in London were these kind of rings are sold, for the purpose of going on the Fawney.
Someone who practiced this con might also be called a fawney-dropper or fawney-bouncer.
The shift to the <ph-> spelling occurred when the word crossed the Atlantic. As a name for the confidence game, the term did not gain a purchase on American soil, but the more general sense of not genuine or fake did. Phony, in the sense we know it today, is clearly in place by the 1890s, but there are a few ambiguous early uses.
The OED has a citation from an 1862 US Civil War letter that reads:
They keep skirmishing along the line. I will tell you of a phoney scrape and also a serious one, too.
But phoney here may be a variant spelling of funny.
Another ambiguous use is from the Detroit Plaindealer of 4 April 1890, in an article telling of two telephone operators who were married to each other over the telephone. The phoney marriage is clearly a play on telephone, but what is not clear is whether the sense of not genuine is also there as half of a double entendre:
Minnie Worley, aged 22, Telephone Exchange operator at South Bend, and Frank Middleton, aged 25, in a like position at Michigan City, became acquainted over the wires during their night watches. Finally Middleton proposed in fun that they get married by telephone, and Minnie consented. A Michigan City justice was called in and performed a legal ceremony, but without the necessary state license. It was passed off as quite a “phoney” joke; but it grows serious, when eminent legal council pronounce it valid and that Justice Dibble who performed the ceremony is liable to imprisonment for doing so without the necessary license.
But there is an unambiguous use of phony in a description of a baseball game in Washington, DC’s Evening Star of 7 May 1892:
Chamberlain’s home run that won the 7 to 2 game for the Cinncinnatis from Washington was a little on the phony order. Ordinarily it would have been a rattling good single, but Donovan, in left, knew that a single meant a run, and he took a dying chance to get it. He jumped forward to get it upon the fly, but it hit right in front of him and went on clear down to the hand ball court and four runs were scored.
That’s the genuine origin.
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Sources:
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. phoney, n.1.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. phoney, adj. and n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. fawney, n.
“Quite ‘Phoney.’” Plaindealer (Detroit), 4 April 1890, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Parker, George. A View of Society and Manners in High and Low Life, vol. 2. London: 1781, 166–67. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
“Weekly Ball Talk.” Evening Star (Washington, DC), 7 May 1892, 12. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Geoffrey Keating, War Office photographer, 28 November 1939. Imperial War Museum (IWM O 344). Public domain image.
