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View synonyms for palm off

palm off

verb

  1. to offer, sell, or spend fraudulently

    to palm off a counterfeit coin

  2. to divert in order to be rid of

    I palmed the unwelcome visitor off on John

“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Idioms and Phrases

Pass off by deception, substitute with intent to deceive, as in The salesman tried to palm off a zircon as a diamond , or The producer tried to palm her off as a star from the Metropolitan Opera . This expression alludes to concealing something in the palm of one's hand. It replaced the earlier palm on in the early 1800s.
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Example Sentences

What a lot of the players are asking is why exactly they as world champions are being palmed off with an assistant coach rather than the kind of world-class coach that their performances merit.

From BBC

It’s offensive to try to paint them as self-interested NIMBYs who just want to palm off the problem on someone else.

Protected from the news media after her brother dies, Saskia is palmed off on family friends — Jane and Philip and their son, Xavier.

But he may get credit for not dissembling or trying to palm off the blame on others.

But the document emphasises that departments cannot just palm off problems to the Cabinet Office, and will have to staff their own ”department operations centres”, and fund any initiatives from existing budgets.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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