Urban Dictionary Merch
Your favorite words on things you can wear, drink from, read, or give to a friend.
The Urban Dictionary Store sells gifts you’ll have to explain.
Snake oil
any dubious or fraudulent remedy or cure (The route of the fraud the word is derived from resulted from a misunderstanding of a traditional Chinese joint and muscle painkiller derived from the skin of the Chinese water snake)
Snake oil by The Return of Light Joker December 18, 2007
snake oil
Snake Oil
Snake Oil by Bigsexy1387 August 13, 2021
snake-oil simplification
When someone oversimplifies a task in order to get your buy-in. This is something done typically by sales people in order to clinch a sale, or by software management in order to convince developers to assign small estimates to large and complicated tasks
That mgmt slide show was a total snake-oil simplification! When you think about it for a few minutes its clear that providing the functionality described will be a lot more complicated than just plugging component A into server B. Who agreed to the effort estimates on this anyway!?!? We're screwed man, we'll never make this date!
snake-oil simplification by Joe Swift January 31, 2008
More from Urban Dictionary
kidulting
Every time I walk into the toy aisle, I catch myself kidulting over the latest action figures and LEGO sets!
kidulting by Emotional Cruiser October 12, 2025
Word of the Day on October 4, 2026