spoof

plural spoofs

1. countableAn act of deception; a hoax; a joking prank.First known use 1889

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   “Rahther, I say. But you understand, of course, that I’m giving him a bit of spoof.” / “A bit of what?” / “Spoof—spoof. Is it possible that you have been here since Saturday without learning what ‘spoof’ means? It means to chaff, to joke. In the States the slang equivalent would be ‘to string’ someone.” / “How did you learn it?” / “A cabby told me about it. I started to have some fun with him, and he told me to ‘give over on the spoof.’[…]”

   1906, George Ade, “What One Man Picked Up in London and Sent Back to His Brother”, in In Pastures New, Toronto, Ont.: The Musson Book Company, →OCLC, pages 76–77

   1. countableuncountablecomputingA cyberattack involving deception via impersonated identities; a digital asset used in such an attack.

      Don't click anything on that website! That whole site is a spoof! Call IT right now.

2. countableA light parody.First known use 1958

   On Broadway, where it opened in 1949, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a spoof of the madcap Twenties which gave Carol Channing her first starring role; on the screen, it was an up-to-date spoof of sex which gave Marilyn Monroe her first starring role in a musical.

   1999 August, Stanley Green, Elaine Schmidt, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, in Hollywood Musicals Year by Year, 2nd edition, Milwaukee, Wis.: Hal Leonard Corporation, →ISBN, page 177

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   The final piece of the country puzzle is found at the corner of Brisbane Street and Kable Avenue, where the Hands of Fame cornerstone bears the palm-prints of more country greats. A glorious spoof, the Noses of Fame memorial, can be savoured over a beer at the Tattersalls Hotel on Peel Street.

   2003, Margo Daly, Anne Dehne, David Leffman, Chris Scott, “New South Wales and ACT”, in The Rough Guide to Australia, 6th edition, New York, N.Y.; London: Rough Guides, →ISBN, pages 330–331

   When Nirvana toured with us in 1991 before Nevermind broke, no one in Europe knew who they were. They were often the first band onstage at festivals, playing amazing shows filmed by Dave Markey, the filmmaker who came along with us to document the tour that later became the film 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The movie had a lot of humorous moments of over-the-top self-indulgence—it was basically a spoof of rockumentaries. Kurt was always funny and fun to be around, and seemed to soak up any kind of personal attention. I felt very big-sisterly, almost maternal, whenever the two of us were together, and it shows in that film.

   2015, Kim Gordon, chapter 30, in Carrie Thornton, editor, Girl in a Band, New York: Dey st., →ISBN, page 179

   Synonyms: parody, satire, send-up, sendup

3. UKcountablehistoricalA drinking game in which players hold up to three (or another specified number of) coins hidden in a fist and attempt to guess the total number of coins held.

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   The British journalist and author Richard Boston supplies an illustrative example of a drinking game once commonly played in British public houses but which has since faded from use: The game Spoof involves three or more players concealing between zero and three coins or similar small objects in a clenched fist that they hold in front of their body or place on the bar counter or table. Players are then prompted to correctly guess the total number of coins held by all players. As the game progresses, correct guesses allow players to drop out until the final round, in which the "loser," determined by making an incorrect guess, is punished by being required to buy the next round of drinks.

   2015, Thomas Thurnell-Read, “Drinking Games”, in Scott C. Martin, editor, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Reference, →ISBN

4. uncountableNonsense.

   I think you used the expression that you came out because people at home were not aware whether it was "spoof" or whether it really could be carried into effect?—A large number of people at home thought it was "spoof."

   1904, House of Commons, Parliament of the United Kingdom, Sessional Papers, volume 39, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, →OCLC, paragraph 9,049, page 376, column 1

5. countableuncountablemathematicsA constructed number or solution that satisfies a set of conditions only when one of its rules are relaxed.

1. not comparableFake, hoax.

   Despite appearances, Hajime Furukawa's wacky I Don't Like Friday was never aimed at children, but ran as a spoof sex-education English course in Business Jump.

   2004, Paul Gravett, “The All-encompassing: A Medium for Every Taste, Interest and Stage of Life”, in Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics, London: Laurence King Publishing; New York, N.Y.: Harper Design International, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 127

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   His most recent art project, 'Consuming Desire', explored men's relationship with pornography, using invisible art strategies (a spoof sex shop and a spoof porn CD-ROM), media interventions (TV/radio and press exposure), and therapeutic work with men addicted to pornography.

   1998, “Notes on Contributors”, in George McKay, editor, DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain, London; New York, N.Y.: Verso, →ISBN, page 300

present singular third person spoofs · participle present spoofing · participle past spoofed · past spoofed

1. transitiveTo gently satirize.First known use 1914

   Her [Jean Harlow's] best film is generally considered to be Bombshell (1933), in which she spoofed her own career as a Hollywood sex goddess.

   1971, Harvey R. Deneroff, “Harlow, Jean”, in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S[amuel] Boyer, editors, Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, volumes II (G–O), Cambridge, Mass.; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 137

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   [T]he ensemble [of From A to Z] included […] Elliott Reid spoofing television coverage of a political convention, Kelly Brown trying out another of those nostalgic soft-shoe numbers, and so on. The first-act finale observed a venerable revue tradition by spoofing a current hit show; From A to Z chose The Sound of Music.

   2002, Ethan Mordden, “What’s in It for You?: The Shows of 1960”, in Open a New Window: The Broadway Musical in the 1960s (Golden Age of the Broadway Musical), New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 9

   According to the audio commentary on "Treehouse Of Horror III," some of the creative folks at The Simpsons were concerned that the "Treehouse of Horror" franchise had outworn its welcome and was rapidly running out of classic horror or science-fiction fodder to spoof.

   2012 April 29, Nathan Rabin, “The Simpsons (Classic): “Treehouse of Horror III” (season 4, episode 5; originally aired 10/29/1992)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 01 Sep 2017

   The resulting conception of the Gulf region as a series of local destinations, as opposed to being an integrated maritime space unified by a body of water, is so pervasive that when Mississippi state legislator Steve Holland proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in an effort to spoof his anti-immigration colleagues the joke was lost on the national media (Wilkinson 2012).

   2014, Philip E. Steinberg, “Mediterranean Metaphors: Travel, Translation and Oceanic Imaginaries in the 'New Mediterraneans' of the Arctic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean”, in Jon Anderson, Kimberley Peters, editors, Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean, Routledge, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 27

   Synonyms: send up

2. transitiveTo deceive.

   Bandy is a few miles from Duffersville—how many I won't say, because when, on local information, I told Ebsworth three and he walked it, he declared he had been deliberately spoofed, and went about vowing reprisals.

   1889, Faed, [pseudonym; Arthur James Wilson], Nym [pseudonym], Duffersville: Its Cycling Chronicles and Other Sketches, Dublin: Irish Cyclist & Athlete Office; London: Iliffe and Son; Shrewsbury, Shropshire: F. W. Jervis, →OCLC, page 14

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   Amidst surroundings thus happily suggesting the idyllic and pastoral associations of Arcady, is an unpretending booth, the placards on which announce it to be the temporary resting-place of the "Far-famed Adepts of Thibet," who are there for a much-needed change, after a "3500 years' residence in the Desert of Gobi." There is also a solemn warning that "it is impossible to spoof a Mahatma."

   1892 August 27, “Two Penn’orth of Theosophy. (A Sketch at the Islington Arcadia.)”, in T. Taylor, editor, Punch, volume CIII, London: Published at the office, 85, Fleet Street, →OCLC, page 85, column 1

3. ambitransitivecomputingTo falsify; especially, to falsify identities by impersonating for scamming purposes.

   The fraudsters convincingly spoofed a Microsoft webpage and then invited their victims to click various links found there.

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   However, MULTOPS assumes that packet rates between two hosts are proportional and the IP addresses are not spoofed.

   2003, Tao Peng, Christopher Leckie, Kotagiri Ramamohanarao, “Detecting Distributed Denial of Service Attacks by Sharing Distributed Beliefs”, in Rei Safavi-Naini, Jennifer Seberry, editors, Information Security and Privacy: 8th Australasian Conference, ACISP 2003, Wollongong, Australia, July 9–11, 2003: Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 2727), Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Springer, →ISBN, page 224

   [I]dentities in the online world can be easily spoofed. Your ten-year-old daughter will know that a middle-aged man is not her age or gender when she sees him in the physical world. But as we have seen, that middle-aged man can easily pass himself off as another ten-year-old girl in the online world.

   2007, Wes Kussmaul, “The Solution”, in The Sex Life of Tables: What Happens When Databases about You … Mate, Waltham, Mass.: PKI Press, →ISBN, page 83

   This attack [session hijacking] uses the fact that most communications are protected at session setup but not thereafter. The attacker spoofs the victim's IP address and performs a DoS [denial-of-service] attack on the victim.

   2009, Manfred Fettinger, “Overview of Security Attacks”, in Intrusion Detection in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: Comparison of Different Approaches, [Munich]: GRIN Verlag, →ISBN, section 2.5.2 (Session Hijacking), page 5

   For the U.S. and its allies, finding new ways to navigate is crucial. In the Ukraine war, Russia is jamming and spoofing—blocking and faking signals [respectively]—so frequently that satellite navigation isn’t dependable. Other potential adversaries, including China and North Korea, possess similar capabilities. GPS spoofing by militaries has become a civilian hazard as well, presenting a risk to commercial aircraft. “This problem hasn’t been as urgent until right now, when we are seeing the end of reliable GPS,” said Russell Anderson, a principal scientist at Q-CTRL, the Australian startup that ran the test flight. “It is the arms race of the current day, in terms of navigation.”

   2025 November 19, Mike Cherney, “The Pentagon Can’t Trust GPS Anymore. Is Quantum Physics the Answer? New devices navigate without satellites or risk of enemy jamming signals”, in The Wall Street Journal, archived from the original on 20 Nov 2025

1. AustraliaNew ZealandslanguncountableSemen.

   ‘Holy-Jesus-fuckin’-Christ! I’m comin’! I’m shootin’ me bolt! I’m gonna fill ya twat with spoof!’

   1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 141

   Synonyms: spunk, spooge, cum, jizz, jizzum, jism, gism, nut

present singular third person spoofs · participle present spoofing · participle past spoofed · past spoofed

1. AustraliaNew ZealandslangTo ejaculate, to come.

   1 more example

   [T]he release of semen from the penis predominantly symbolizes a forceful masculine operation, an orgasmic ‘rush’ – ejaculate refers to a sudden happening, an ejection – while the ‘loss’ of blood during menstruation is viewed as a more or less passive occurrence. Even the metaphors employed to depict these two aspects of corporeality serve to situate them on differently gendered poles. Man ‘spoofs off’ or ‘shoots his load’, while woman ‘gets her visitor’, ‘has got her monthly’.

   2002, Annie Potts, “Innerspace”, in The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabulares of Heterosex, Hove, East Sussex; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, part 2 (The Vocabularies of Heterosex), page 180

   Synonyms: ejaculate