Definition: An act, document or artifact intended to deceive or defraud.
Extended Definition: What Is a Hoax?
Extended Definition: What Is a Hoax?
Also Known As: fabrication, fake, deception
Examples:
The fabricated discovery of "Piltdown Man" in England, supposedly the fossilized remains of an ape-like ancestor of humans, is considered one of the greatest scientific hoaxes of the twentieth century.

