American guy lying to shake off other guys? Awesome! (9)

I believe the answer is:

bodacious

'awesome' is the definition.
(bodacious informally means awesome or excellent)

'american guy lying to shake off other guys?' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'american' could be 'us' (abbreviation for United States) and 'us' is present in the answer.
'guy' could be 'bod' (bod can informally mean a person) and 'bod' is found within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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