U.S. Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) laughs in the House chamber during the second day of elections for speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 4, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

By Adam Kovac January 30, 2023

First, he was Jewish. Then he was a volleyball star and a finance wizard who lost his mother on 9/11. Now George Santos is a verb. 

The New York congressman has become so well known for fabricating his biography that the internet has coined a new term for being fooled by someone who’s lying: “being Santosed.” 

The term “being Santosed” is already so ubiquitous that it has several definitions on Urban Dictionary. “When you fall for someone’s bald-faced, outlandish lies,” reads one, using the example of a boyfriend “who said he was a doctor, had a house in the Hamptons, and that his dad was an astronaut; can’t believe I fell for that.”

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The term is also being used in personnel management, as a warning that hiring managers must do due diligence to avoid being Santosed. 

While Santos has managed to keep himself in the headlines thanks to a seemingly endless discovery of new untruths related to statements he made during his campaign, his name has started turning up as shorthand in completely unrelated news stories. 

Others have used the term “Santosed” to call out staged anti-vaccination propaganda on Twitter.

Another form of the term is “pulling a Santos.” In other words, rather than being on the receiving end of a lie (“being Santosed”), a person making a false claim is “pulling a Santos.” 

Santos’ false claims about himself include lying about his education, his career, his finances and his family. Among other things, he said his grandparents were Holocaust survivors; in fact his grandparents were born in Brazil before the Nazis rose to power.

Some have gotten so excited about the new play on words that they believe we already have a favorite for 2023’s word of the year. 

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