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Noun

snake oil ‎(uncountable)

1. A traditional Chinese medicine used to treat joint pain.
2. A type of 19th-century patent medicine sold in the United States that claimed to contain snake fat, supposedly a Native American remedy for various ailments.
3. (idiomatic) A fraudulent, ineffective potion or nostrum; panacea.
4. (idiomatic) Any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality.

Translations

Verb

snake oil ‎(third-person singular simple present snake oils, present participle snake oiling, simple past and past participle snake oiled)

1. (slang) To dupe or con.
   • 1995, Nancy Owen Nelson (ed.), Private Voices, Public Lives:

     And this is particularly so for many of our women students who have been hustled and snake-oiled to deny the validity of their intellects.

   • 2013, Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge, Vintage 2014, p. 23:

     Before she had a chance to deal with her hangover, he was on the phone snake-oiling her into the first of what would be many ill-fated fraud cases.