bill of goods

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bill of goods (plural bills of goods)

2. (business) A list of items purchased or offered for sale; (metonymic) the items themselves, as a collection or set.

   Coordinate terms: bill of materials, bill of lading, bill of exchange

   Near-synonym: bill of sale

   • 1884, Horatio Alger, chapter 18, in Do and Dare:

     "This morning," he said, "I foolishly gave Eben a hundred dollars, and sent him to Boston to pay for a bill of goods which I recently bought of a wholesale house on Milk Street."

4. (idiomatic) A set of misleading or deceptive claims.

   Near-synonyms: misinformation, disinformation, bullshit; see also Thesaurus:bullshit

   • 1956 August 27, “Harry's Bitter Week”, in Time:

     Truman bought quite a bill of goods from the old cronies who had flocked to Harriman.

• sell someone a bill of goods