When something is “phony” (or, in Commonwealth countries, “phoney”), it’s fake, or if a person, insincere. J.D. Salinger captured it precisely in Catcher in the Rye: “they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life.”
There’s a myth that “phony”, probably because it sounds like “phone” as in “telephone”, entered usage because of a fear in the 1880s that the telephone, which was just beginning to come into widespread use, would be used to trick people. Anything you heard over the phone, the story went, couldn’t be trusted, and so it was “phony”. One way to tell that this is most likely just a myth is to check the date of the first citation of “phony” in print. It’s from 1862, well before the telephone was even invented (the patent was issued in 1876).
On the other hand, that original citation is from a personal letter (from a B. Moody, written to his mother during the US Civil War), and from the context it’s just possible that the writer didn’t know how to spell “funny:” “They keep skirmishing along the line. I will tell you of a phoney scrape and also a serious one, too.” In short, the whole controversy could have been avoided if anybody had just thought to ring up Mr. Moody and ask. Everybody is quite forthright on the phone, after all.
A more plausible origin story for “phony” is that it’s derived from the English word “fawney.” A “fawney” meant (and is still occasionally used to mean) a finger ring. It’s derived from the Irish word “fáine” (or “fáinne”), which means ring. “Fawney” had a slang meaning as well, in the 1700s and 1800s, and it referred to a scam described this way in the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: “A fellow drops a brass ring, double gilt, which he picks up before the party meant to be cheated, and to whom he disposes of it for less than its supposed, and ten times more than its real, value.” The “fawney” was a ring, the purpose of which was to deceive the victim. It also reportedly appears in a reference book that seems like it would be a great addition to anyone’s library: Nathan Bailey’s Dictionary of Canting and Thieving Slang from 1736.
The oldest public appearance of “phony” was in the Chicago Tribune from June 6, 1893. The word was evidently considered slang at that time, judging by the fact that the newspaper enclosed it in quotes: “Many of the ‘phony’ bookmakers in the ring had not enough play to keep them alive.” The Washington Post felt the same way three years later: “Detective McGlue and Policeman Cooney captured two men yesterday in the act of working a clever ‘phoney’ game on the residents of the Third Precinct.” But by 1900, the word had apparently gained enough currency for George Ade to dispense with the quotation marks in More Fables, Illustrated: “‘Overlook all the Phoney Acting by the Little Lady, Bud,’ said the Fireman.”
The popular usage of “phony,” at least in the US, was centered in horse racing, where “phony” referred to betting slips issued by unofficial bookies who didn’t pay on winning bets. More common words and phrases came from horse racing than you might expect. Not just “phony” (assuming that’s really where it was popularized), but “win hands down” refers to a horse being so far ahead at the end of a race that the jockey loosens his grip on the reins. “Winning by a nose” and “down to the wire” come from horse racing too — at one time there really was a thin wire strung across the finish line to trigger an automatic camera when the race was extremely close — literally a “photo finish.” “Dark horse” dates from the 1830s, and refers to an unknown or unfamiliar horse. It could be of any color; the “dark” meant nobody had much information about the horse. We’ve reached the “home stretch” (the last part of the race course), and the last expression left is “across the board” — that was a bet placed on one horse to come in first, second, or third. The horses were listed on a board, so a bet on all three positions went all the way across the board. Any other horse racing terms are just also rans — which is, oops, another one! Any horse that didn’t finish in the first three positions was listed as “also ran.” Which is probably likely to happen to any phony pony.
