the.com/hoax

means A deliberate deception dressed up as fact, designed to make people believe something false is true.

from Likely a worn-down form of 'hocus,' as in 'hocus-pocus,' the nonsense phrase stage magicians used to misdirect an audience while the trick happened. By the late 1700s 'hoax' had emerged as its own word for an elaborate practical deception — the magician's patter shrunk into a single word for the con itself.