English Explanatory Dictionary

snake oil

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A fraudulent, ineffective potion or nostrum; panacea.
  2. A traditional Chinese medicine used to treat joint pain.
  3. 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.
  4. Any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality.

Pronunciation

En-au-snake oil.ogg

Word forms

snake oil
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on S Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary