phoney, you

   ‘You dirty phoney’ is equated with ‘you hypocrite’ in Saul Bellow’s The Victim. ‘Phoney’, sometimes ‘phony’, is wellused in modern times, and certainly refers to fake rather than real qualities. An ingenious explanation of the word, quoted at the beginning of the twentieth century, was that a ‘phoney’ was something that had no more substance than a telephone conversation with a nonexistent person.

   Other etymologists have pointed to the previous existence of ‘fawney’, probably derived from Irish fáinne, ‘ring’, and referring to a practice whereby a gilt ring was sold to a dupe as if it were gold. The full slang phrase was ‘fawney-dropping’, since the fake ring was normally dropped ‘accidentally’ in front of the victim and then made the subject of a conversation.