Foist
Fred asked about the
word foist. It shows up in settings such as this: “Don’t let them foist their
shoddy goods on you.” In this sense, it means to palm off or surreptitiously
force items on someone.
“To palm off” is quite
accurate because the word originally meant to conceal a token in your hand or
fist and then make it appear as if by magic. It later meant to practice fraud,
to behave stealthily, and to introduce something inferior.
There are two other
verbs spelled f-o-i-s-t, and they came from completely different sources. To
foist meant to smell or grow musty, and it took its meaning from the noun
meaning a wine cask.
Another foist (long
obsolete) meant to break wind; the noun from which it was derived involved
onomatopoeia--fssssst! In their play The Honest Whore, Thomas Dekker and
Thomas Middleton gave this advice: “Spurne
your hounds when they foiste.”
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