How to Use snake oil in a Sentence

snake oil

noun

• Scams evolved from the snake oil salesman at the door to mail to email.
  — Vijay Pande, Fortune, 13 June 2023
• The elixir of carbon-free growth turns out to be snake oil after all.
  — Rupert Darwall, National Review, 22 Jan. 2018
• People are scared right now, and that's a great time for snake oil salesmen to move in for the strike.
  — Arkansas Online, 3 Oct. 2020
• There’s a lot of flash and hipness, snake oil and marketing.
  — Washington Post, 26 Aug. 2019
• There’s just one problem: There are hundreds of VPNs, and some of them are snake oil.
  — Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post, 15 July 2022
• In my experience, most are like snake oil—all talk and no growth.
  — Deana Bianco, SELF, 27 Nov. 2019
• But is this just swapping one kind of snake oil with another?
  — Audrey Clare Farley, The New Republic, 3 Jan. 2022
• For skeptics, this is a combination of two kinds of snake oil.
  — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 14 Dec. 2020
• Some will swallow the elixir narrative and thrive, others will smell snake oil.
  — Logan Jenkins, sandiegouniontribune.com, 26 Apr. 2018
• Doctors also used snake oil to treat arthritis, Dr. Tavel points out.
  — Korin Miller, SELF, 23 Oct. 2017
• Don’t buy the snake oil of simple development and the cloud, and don’t buy a pig in a poke—test the product in real-world settings.
  — Forbes, 17 Aug. 2022
• There are so many hacks online, like those who drop-ship fake products or sell snake oil services.
  — Rolling Stone Culture Council, Rolling Stone, 25 Oct. 2022
• The world of guitar tone is almost as driven by myths and snake oil as ancient Greece itself.
  — Parker Hall, WIRED, 22 Jan. 2023
• On the other hand, many in Washington also seemed to buy into Mr. Bankman-Fried’s snake oil.
  — Christopher Mims, WSJ, 19 Nov. 2022
• Fake coronavirus miracle cures Quacks have been hawking fake cures since the dawn of time, and nobody wants to fall for the old snake oil trick.
  — Kim Komando, USA TODAY, 30 Apr. 2020
• Those in AI Ethics are stridently concerned about snake oil uses that are going to come out of the woodwork.
  — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 22 Jan. 2023
• His snake oil helped take the United States’ right-wing political fringe to dizzying heights.
  — Monitor Editors, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 Sep. 2017
• Drugs no better than snake oil — but deemed safe — could be sold to desperate patients at a profit.
  — Adam Feuerstein, STAT, 20 June 2018
• Deregulation, in turn, paves the way for the return of these jobs for financial snake oil salesman.
  — Rajesh D. Nayak, Slate Magazine, 22 Dec. 2017
• While garnering billions of views, Jones’ videos have allowed him to sell millions of dollars worth of snake oil.
  — Brian Chasnoff, San Antonio Express-News, 25 May 2018
• Misinformation and snake oil spread as rapidly as the virus.
  — Susan Goldberg, National Geographic, 9 Dec. 2021
• This is a story of snake oil charlatans and fake prophecies, of a beauty queen whose husbands keep ending up dead.
  — Leah Sottile, Rolling Stone, 16 June 2022
• The chaos of a pandemic is ripe territory for snake oil salesmen.
  — Sy Mukherjee, Fortune, 30 June 2020
• The programs and procedures that the Supreme Court favored in 1998 amount to little more than managerial snake oil.
  — Yasmin Dunn, Fortune, 29 Apr. 2022
• And the piecemeal comfort and convenience options that abound in the competitors can feel like a whole lot of snake oil salesmanship.
  — Robert Duffer, chicagotribune.com, 19 Mar. 2018
• Around the same era, in England and America, snake oil became a widespread cure for common ailments.
  — Elisa Lipsky-Karasz, WSJ, 4 Dec. 2018
• The enclave earned its name from snake oil peddlers and far more unsavory characters.
  — Hunter Boyce, ajc, 25 July 2022
• Ian shows me a small bottle of lime tonol — a snake oil of its time, thought to cure everything from weak ankles to epilepsy and yawning — with a Star of David clearly stamped on it.
  — New York Times, 26 Feb. 2021
• But research on the placebo effect suggests that even snake oil can have benefits for those who believe.
  — Markham Heid, Time, 5 Oct. 2017
• Accessories are where the vast majority of audio snake oil shows up.
  — Parker Hall, Wired, 5 June 2021

Last Updated: 27 Jun 2024