Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person who is easily deceived or is used to carry out the designs of another.
  • transitive verb To deceive (an unwary person). synonym: deceive.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A person who is deceived; one who is led astray by false representations or conceptions; a victim of credulity: as, the dupe of a designing rogue; he is a dupe to his imagination.
  • To deceive; trick; mislead by imposing on one's credulity: as, to dupe a person by flattery.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To deceive; to trick; to mislead by imposing on one's credulity; to gull.
  • noun One who has been deceived or who is easily deceived; a gull.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To swindle, deceive, or trick.
  • verb photography To duplicate a photographic image.
  • noun A person who has been deceived.
  • noun photography A duplicate of a photographic image.
  • noun restaurant industry A duplicate of an order receipt printed for kitchen staff.
  • noun informal A duplicate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb fool or hoax
  • noun a person who is tricked or swindled

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Old French, probably alteration of huppe, hoopoe (from the bird's somewhat foolish appearance); see hoopoe.]

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Examples

  • Pilon's friend and favorite dupe is small-time crook, Danny Alvarez, who has inherited two houses and a gold watch from his late grandfather, and who later falls in love with Dolores Ramirez.

    Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat 2009

  • Pilon's friend and favorite dupe is small-time crook, Danny Alvarez, who has inherited two houses and a gold watch from his late grandfather, and who later falls in love with Dolores Ramirez.

    Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat 2009

  • Calling someone a terrorist dupe is nowhere the same as calling them EVIL.

    Think Progress » Karl Rove attacks the blogosphere. 2006

  • In what KCNA called "an interview" that he gave of his own free will to authorities, Park said he'd been a dupe, that is, a dupe of all that stuff spread by human-rights advocates overseas about the horrors of life in North Korea.

    Asia Times Online 2010

  • And yet maybe technology is doing in the long-term dupe, the dangerous liaison where no one gets caught and no one pays.

    Entertainment News: CBSNews.com 2009

  • And yet maybe technology is doing in the long-term dupe, the dangerous liaison where no one gets caught and no one pays.

    Breaking News: CBS News 2009

  • And yet maybe technology is doing in the long-term dupe, the dangerous liaison where no one gets caught and no one pays.

    msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines 2009

  • Also, sometimes because I use a painfully clever title dupe check won't pick up that it's the same as another story in upcoming.

    digg.com: Stories / Popular 2008

  • McCain was and is, a dupe, which is an offense far greater than any imagined 'appeasement'.

    Clinton: McCain's '2013' speech like 'Mission Accomplished' 2008

  • Besides being a religious shyster, or a hoodwinked dupe, that is.

    Waaay off topic - The Panda's Thumb 2009

Comments

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  • This comes from a bird! The French word huppe means a certain small, elaborately crested bird, which we call the hoopoe. In Middle French the phrase du huppe ("of the hoopoe") became slang duppe, meaning a dupe, and passed into English with the same meaning.

    Wordcraft archives, September 2004

    November 5, 2007

  • Because they believe the bird was...well, not too smart. :-) Great etymology, sionnach--thanks!

    November 5, 2007

  • “But in New York, a city that has become almost synonymous with high security, where office employees wear picture IDs and surveillance cameras are on the rise, some officers don’t wear their badges on patrol.

    Instead, they wear fakes.

    Called “dupes,” these phony badges are often just a trifle smaller than real ones but otherwise completely authentic. Officers use them because losing a real badge can mean paperwork and a heavy penalty, as much as 10 days’ pay.”

    The New York Times, The Officer Is Real; The Badge May Be an Impostor, by Ray Rivera, November 30, 2009

    December 1, 2009