snow job

snow job
noun
NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH
informal
snow job (noun) · snow jobs (plural noun)
a deception or concealment of one's real motive in an attempt to flatter or persuade:
"we need to do a snow job on him"
Translate snow job to

German
Schneejob
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"Snow job" is an informal expression that refers to:
An attempt to persuade someone to do something or believe something that is not true.
An effort to deceive or overwhelm with insincere talk.

snow job
noun
: an intensive effort at persuasion or deception

Examples of snow job in a Sentence
They'd been promised a big return on their investments, but all they got was a snow job.
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
The presence of Darden, the races of the defendant and the victims and the claims of a political snow job all suggest that Buck’s will be the kind of high-current trial that occasionally convulses Los Angeles.
—Jesse Barron, New York Times, 16 Sep. 2020

Word History
First Known Use
1943, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of snow job was in 1943
See more words from the same year
Articles Related to snow job


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Snow job
Another cool term, snow job, possibly stems from the metaphoric image of being snowed under, but with words specifically. The term snow job refers to the act of persuading or deceiving someone by overwhelming them with information or flattery.

… of the many techniques used to impart credibility, the one that comes most naturally to a journalist such as Mr. Collins is what might be called the Frederick Forsyth Snow Job: blind the reader with a blizzard of facts so that he hardly notices the fiction.
— Ken Follett, The New York Times Book Review, 16 June 1985

He really believes in what he's talking about. You feel like you're not getting a snow job. When he talks, he makes you believe that you can win.
— Craig Berube, quoted in Hockey Digest, February 1995