Anything sham or forged. The origin of the word is obscure. See N.E.D.
Bogus, says Mr. Lowell, Introduction to the ‘Biglow Papers,’ 1866, “is, I more than suspect, a corruption of the French bagasse (from low Latin bagasea), which travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans.” [See BAGASSE.]
1827. He never procured the casting of a Bogus at one of our furnaces.—Painesville (Ohio) Telegraph, July 6. (N.E.D.)
1840. The Commissioners had ascertained by the aid of hammer and chisel, that the boxes of the “real stuff” which had been so loudly vaunted, contained a heavy charge of broken glass and tenpenny nails, covered above and below with half-dollars, principally “bogus.”—Mrs. Kirkland, ‘A New Home,’ p. 227. (Italics in the original.)
1842. Cowdery, Whitman, and others were guilty of perjury, cheating, selling bogus money (base coin), and even stones and sand for bogus.—John A. Clark, ‘Gleanings by the Way,’ p. 340.
1844. To bolster up the interests of blacklegs and bogus-makers.—Nauvoo Neighbor, June 12.
1844. A bogus press for making counterfeit money was dug up near Lyme, Huron County, Pa., on Monday last.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, Oct. 12.
1848. No luggage, nor no nothing, but a roll of bogus.—W. E. Burton, ‘Waggeries,’ p. 90 (Phila.).
1850. We employed that same Bill Hickman to ferret out a bogus press and a gang of counterfeiters that were going into operation in our frontier country. James H. Mulholland was one of the principal actors in the bogus business…. A part of the bogus machine has been found here in Mulholland’s possession.—Frontier Guardian (ed. by Orson Hyde), Jan. 23.
1853. [The Magicians of Egypt] produced a very good bogus, but it was not quite the true coin.—Brigham Young, Aug. 14: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 270.
a. 1856. Crocodile tears are bogus, but accompanied in the end with genuine salt-drops, to which the world pays as little heed as to the perspiration upon a pitcher of ice-water.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ iv. 216.
1857. I must have paid you for my supper with a bogus half-dollar.—Herald of Freedom (Lawrence, Kas.), Aug. 22.
1863. Throughout the entire State [Texas] the spirit of lawlessness and insurrection existed long before the vote on secession, ordered by the “bogus” Convention, had been taken.—O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ ii. 32.
1867. There is a bogus assessor in town, and we are going to hang him.—A. D. Richardson, ‘Beyond the Mississippi,’ p. 49.
1867. “MORE BOGUS.—Joe Logan was arrested a week ago by ‘X,’ for manufacturing bogus gold dust.”—Helena (Mont.) paper, cited in A. K. McClure’s ‘Rocky Mountains,’ p. 378 (Phila.).
