Phoney or phony?
phoney is an adjective meaning “Alternative form of phony”; phony is an adjective meaning “Fraudulent; fake; having a misleading appearance”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) phony is about 4.6 times as common as phoney.
What is the difference between phoney and phony?
| phoney | phony | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, noun, verb | adjective, noun, verb, suffix |
| Meaning | UKAlternative form of phony | informalFraudulent; fake; having a misleading appearance informalA person who assumes an identity or quality other than their own informalA person who professes beliefs or opinions that they do not hold |
| Example | none recorded | A good jeweler should be able to tell a real stone from a phony one |
| Forms | phonier, phoniest | phonier, phoniest |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈfoʊni/ /-fəni/ |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words | 2.2 times per million words |
Sources: phoney and phony in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of phoney and phony
phoney
- 1
UKAlternative form of phony
- 2
Alternative form of phony
- 3
Alternative form of phony
phony
- 1
informalFraudulent; fake; having a misleading appearance
A good jeweler should be able to tell a real stone from a phony one
- 2
informalA person who assumes an identity or quality other than their own
He claims to be a doctor, but he's nothing but a fast-talking phony
- 3
informalTo fake
- 4
sound or its production
- 5
informalA person who professes beliefs or opinions that they do not hold
He's such a phony, he doesn't believe half of what he says
- 6
musical structure
- 7
informalAnything fraudulent or fake
- 8
language sounds and languages
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, phoney or phony?
phoney appears about once in every 2 million words; phony 2.2 times per million words.
phoney about once in every 2 million wordsphony 2.2 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search phoney vs phony?
“phoney vs phony” is searched about 10 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.