bogus [L18th] Originally an American word, which first appeared meaning an apparatus for making counterfeit coins. The source could have been tantrabogus, a New England word for any strange-looking apparatus or object that possibly came from tantarabobs, which was brought over by colonists from Devon and meant ‘the devil’ or another dialect name for the devil, Bogey, which gave us bogey [M19th] and bogeyman [L16th]. These may go back to a group of words such as bug [LME], bog [E19th], boggart [L16th], bugbear [M16th], and bogle (see mind), all words for evil spirits or something to dislike. Bogus in the sense ‘fraudulent’ developed from the sense ‘counterfeit’, with bogus caller recorded from the early 20th century. Also American is the modern slang sense of bogus, ‘bad’, which came to a wide audience in the name of the 1991 film comedy Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. It seems to have originated as a term used by young computer hackers in the 1970s for anything useless or incorrect.