The word 'phoney' is correct and usable in written English.
It is an adjective that means fake, false, or insincere. You can use it in various contexts to describe something or someone that is not genuine or authentic. For example: - The politician's promises were revealed to be phoney when he failed to follow through on them. - The designer handbag turned out to be a phoney imitation of the real thing. - Her smile was phoney, and I could tell she didn't really mean what she was saying. - The company's claims of being environmentally friendly were proven to be phoney when their harmful practices were exposed. Note: in British English, the word is spelled as 'phony', while in American English, it is spelled as 'phoney'. Both spellings are considered correct.
We have become suspicious: of their mawkish advertising, of their treatment of farmers, of their desperate bids to package up things that really don't need packaging up at all (I mean this literally and metaphorically, versions of "restaurant-style" dishes being every bit as phoney and wasteful as apples wrapped in too much plastic).
Letters from phoney lotteries, prize draws and criminal clairvoyants offering promises of future health and wealth are among those typically hitting people's doormats.
So fuck you, Mad Men, you phoney grey-flannel-suit, male-chauvinist, no-talent, Wasp, white-shirted, racist, antisemitic Republican SOBs!" His view of the initial episodes was pretty much universal among the 50 or so advertising folk from 1960s Madison Avenue I interviewed for my book, The Real Mad Men.
Looming over the Abbott government and Australian society is a genuine budget emergency rather than Hockey's phoney "budget emergency".
There's nothing phoney about the relaxed friendliness of the staff; by day two, the gardener was busy teaching my toddler to speak patois.
Lobbying agencies create phoney blogs for clients and press releases that no journalist will read – all positive content that fools search engines into pushing the dummy content above the negative, driving the output of critics down Google rankings.
If it were up to national governments, the conversation would remain at this phoney level forever.
Citizens Advice has branded the cuts as a "phoney price war".
The election campaign is into its first week, not quite out of the phoney war stage yet, with Thursday's seven-way TV debate promising to be an atonal chorus of evasion and conceit.
They wind up on a tough estate in France as asylum seekers and a strange and fascinating dynamic starts to emerge within this phoney family, and the warrior finds that his belligerent skills and instincts come back into play in a drug turf-war.
– Dewsbury "I'm pleased the phoney war is almost over and the campaign can begin in earnest.
