Deception or trickery; often used in the phrase 'hocus pocus' to mean magical tricks or nonsense.
From 'hocus pocus,' a 17th-century term for sleight-of-hand magic, possibly from Latin 'hoc est corpus' (this is the body, from Catholic Mass). The term mocked religious language to describe conjuring tricks.
Magicians might have borrowed sacred Latin from church services to create fake-magic-sounding incantations—'hocus pocus' could be mockery of real religious language dressed up as fake wizardry.
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