fake it till one makes it

present singular third person fakes it till one makes it · participle present faking it till one makes it · participle past faked it till one made it · past faked it till one made it · alternative fake it until one makes it

1. human sciencesTo pretend to be a certain way until one becomes that way.

   So many other people fake it till they make it, but that never justifies not bringing charges when someone has committed fraud.

   2021 August 30, Erin Griffith, Erin Woo, quoting Alex Gibney, “Schemer or Naïf? Elizabeth Holmes Is Going to Trial.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 18 Aug 2022

   2 more examples

   It gave me a chance to be able to see certain things that I like, and I was like, I just had to find my way, what I was good at in life so I could get those things. I just had to um… fake it till I make it.

   2015, 9:32 from the start, in Lauren Greenfield, director, Magic City (documentary)

   He framed her crimes as “chutzpah” and “moxie”, arguing that the accepted rule of New York’s elite social scene was “fake it until you make it”. He also blamed the influence of social media-obsessed culture.

   2019 May 31, Edward Helmore, “'Fake it until you make it': the strange case of New York's socialite scammer”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2019