PULL THE WOOL OVER SOMEONE’S EYES

To pull the wool over someone’s eyes is to deceive them, especially by telling lies.

 Examples:

 “Common tactics fraudsters use to pull the wool over people’s eyes include uploading fake photos to their online profiles, claiming that they’re working abroad and masquerading as military personnel stationed overseas.”

 “As for how all these women managed to pull the wool over a gullible public’s eyes, the scholar Dick Berents writes, ‘it was apparently extremely difficult to obtain certainty about anything in 15th-century society, even about a person’s death.’”

 “His own favourite hoax came in 1980, after he had pulled the wool over the eyes of the New York Times by faking his own death at the Sundance ski resort.”


 Apparently, the first person described as trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes was an American lawyer, in the mid 19th century, and the “wool” was a lawyer’s curly wig [1].


 The song “You Can’t Pull the Wool over My Eyes” was written by Ager Milton, Charles Newman and Murray Mencher [2].

 [1] Cresswell, Julia. “wool” in The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Oxford University Press, 2009.
 [2] “Ager Milton” in Encyclopedia of Popular Music, edited by Larkin, Colin. Oxford University Press, 2006. 

 Photo credit: Judith