spoof

n.

1. Nonsense; tomfoolery.
2. A hoax.
3. A gentle satirical imitation; a light parody.

tr.v., spoofed, spoof·ing, spoofs.

1. To deceive.
2. To do a spoof of; satirize gently.

[After Spoof, name of a game invented by Arthur Roberts (1852-1933), British comedian.]

WORD HISTORY   We are indebted to a British comedian for the word spoof. Sometime in the 19th century Arthur Roberts (1852-1933) invented a game called Spoof, which involved trickery and nonsense. The first recorded reference to the game in 1884 refers to its revival. It was not long before the word spoof took on the general sense "nonsense, trickery," first recorded in 1889. The verb spoof is first recorded in 1889 as well, in the sense "to deceive." These senses are now less widely used than the noun sense "a light parody or satirical imitation," first recorded in 1958, and the verb sense "to satirize gently," first recorded in 1927.

(1) Faking the sending address of a transmission in order to gain illegal entry into a secure system. See e-mail spoofing.

(2) Creating fake responses or signals in order to keep a session active and prevent timeouts. For example, mainframes continuously poll their terminals. If the lines to remote terminals are temporarily suspended because there is no traffic, a local device spoofs the host with "I'm still here" responses. See how to spoof your technical friend.

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To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a way that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers especially to altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other packet-header data in order to masquerade as a trusted machine. This term has become very widespread and is borderline techspeak. Interestingly, it was already in use in its modern sense more than a century ago among Victorian telegraphers; it shows up in Kipling.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - snyderi, svindel, parodi
v. tr. - narre, lave grin med

Nederlands (Dutch)
beetnemen, voor de gek houden, oplichterij, grap

Français (French)
n. - parodie, blague, canular
v. tr. - parodier, faire marcher, mettre (qn) en boîte

Deutsch (German)
n. - Parodie
v. - durch den Kakao ziehen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - φάρσα, κασκαρίκα, (καθομ.) παρωδία, παραπλανητική πληροφορία
v. - παρωδώ, ξεγελώ

Italiano (Italian)
raggiro, imitazione, abbindolare, imitare

Português (Portuguese)
n. - paródia (f)
v. - parodiar

Русский (Russian)
обман, розыгрыш, мистификация, пародия, род карточной игры, обманывать, разыгрывать, мистифицировать, подтрунивать (над кем-л.)

Español (Spanish)
n. - engaño, broma
v. tr. - engañar, bromear, burlarse

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - skoj, spratt, humbug
v. - skoja med, lura, narra

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
诳骗, 戏弄, 愚弄, 哄骗

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 誑騙, 戲弄, 愚弄
v. tr. - 哄騙, 戲弄

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 속여 넘김, 악의 없는 조롱, 야바위
v. tr. - 장난으로 악의 없이 속이다, 속여 먹다, 조롱하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - だますこと, もじり, パロディー
adj. - 偽物の, いんちきの
v. - かつぐ, からかう

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) نكته أو تمثيليه هزليه (فعل) يهزأ من, يسخر من‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮רמאות, מתיחה, פרודיה‬
v. tr. - ‮היתל, רימה, סידר‬

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