Adjacent Words

Fraud definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

FRAUD, n. [L. fraus.]
Deceit; deception; trick; artifice by which the right or interest of another is injured; a stratagem intended to obtain some undue advantage; an attempt to gain or the obtaining of an advantage over another by imposition or immoral means, particularly deception in contracts, or bargain and sale, either by stating falsehoods, or suppressing truth.
If success a lover's toil attends, who asks if force or fraud obtained his ends.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: intentional deception resulting in injury to another person
2: a person who makes deceitful pretenses [syn: imposter, impostor, pretender, fake, faker, fraud, sham, shammer, pseudo, pseud, role player]
3: something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage [syn: fraud, fraudulence, dupery, hoax, humbug, put-on]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle English fraude, from Anglo-French, from Latin fraud-, fraus Date: 14th century 1. a. deceit, trickery; specifically intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b. an act of deceiving or misrepresenting ; trick 2. a. a person who is not what he or she pretends to be ; impostor; also one who defrauds ; cheat b. one that is not what it seems or is represented to be Synonyms: see deception, imposture

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 criminal deception; the use of false representations to gain an unjust advantage. 2 a dishonest artifice or trick. 3 a person or thing not fulfilling what is claimed or expected of it. Etymology: ME f. OF fraude f. L fraus fraudis

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Fraud Fraud (fr[add]d), n. [F. fraude, L. fraus, fraudis; prob. akin to Skr. dh[=u]rv to injure, dhv[.r] to cause to fall, and E. dull.] 1. Deception deliberately practiced with a view to gaining an unlawful or unfair advantage; artifice by which the right or interest of another is injured; injurious stratagem; deceit; trick. If success a lover's toil attends, Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends. --Pope. 2. (Law) An intentional perversion of truth for the purpose of obtaining some valuable thing or promise from another. 3. A trap or snare. [Obs.] To draw the proud King Ahab into fraud. --Milton. Constructive fraud (Law), an act, statement, or omission which operates as a fraud, although perhaps not intended to be such. --Mozley & W. Pious fraud (Ch. Hist.), a fraud contrived and executed to benefit the church or accomplish some good end, upon the theory that the end justified the means. Statute of frauds (Law), an English statute (1676), the principle of which is incorporated in the legislation of all the States of this country, by which writing with specific solemnities (varying in the several statutes) is required to give efficacy to certain dispositions of property. --Wharton. Syn: Deception; deceit; guile; craft; wile; sham; strife; circumvention; stratagem; trick; imposition; cheat. See Deception.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(frauds) Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. 1. Fraud is the crime of gaining money or financial benefits by a trick or by lying. He was jailed for two years for fraud and deception... Tax frauds are dealt with by the Inland Revenue. N-VAR 2. A fraud is something or someone that deceives people in a way that is illegal or dishonest. He believes many 'psychics' are frauds who rely on perception and subtle deception. N-COUNT 3. If you call someone or something a fraud, you are criticizing them because you think that they are not genuine, or are less good than they claim or appear to be. ...all those fashion frauds who think they are being original by raiding the tired old styles of the '60s. N-COUNT [disapproval]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Deceit, deception, duplicity, imposition, imposture, guile, trick, cheat, chouse, artifice, stratagem, wile, humbug, hoax.

Moby Thesaurus

abstraction, acting, actor, affectation, affecter, annexation, appearance, appropriation, artfulness, artifice, attitudinizing, ballot-box stuffing, bamboozlement, barracuda, bilk, bilker, blagueur, bluff, bluffer, bluffing, boosting, bunco, cardsharping, charlatan, cheat, cheater, cheating, chicane, chicanery, clinquant, color, coloring, con artist, con man, confidence man, conversion, conveyance, counterfeit, cozenage, craft, craftiness, credibility gap, deceit, deceitfulness, deceiver, deception, defrauder, delusion, diddle, diddling, disguise, dishonesty, disingenuousness, dissemblance, dissembling, dissimulation, dodge, double-dealing, dummy, dupery, duping, duplicity, embezzlement, facade, face, fake, fakement, faker, fakery, faking, false air, false front, false show, falseheartedness, falsity, feigning, feint, filching, fishy transaction, flam, flimflam, flimflammer, forgery, forswearing, four-flushing, fourflusher, frame-up, fraudulence, fraudulency, front, gerrymandering, gilt, gloss, graft, grift, guile, gyp, gyp joint, hanky-panky, hoax, hollow man, hoodwinking, humbug, humbuggery, illicit business, imitation, impersonator, imposition, impostor, imposture, insincerity, intrigue, inveigler, junk, knave, liberation, lifting, malingerer, man of straw, mannerist, masquerade, meretriciousness, mock, monkey business, mountebank, ostentation, outward show, paper tiger, paste, performer, perjury, phony, pilferage, pilfering, pinchbeck, pinching, playacting, playactor, poaching, pose, poser, poseur, posing, posture, pretender, pretense, pretension, pretext, put-on, put-up job, quack, quacksalver, quackster, racket, representation, ringer, rip-off, rogue, ruse, saltimbanco, scam, scoundrel, scrounging, seeming, sell, semblance, sham, shammer, shark, sharp practice, sharper, shoddy, shoplifting, show, simulacrum, simulation, snatching, sneak thievery, snitching, speciousness, stealage, stealing, stratagem, straw man, subterfuge, swindle, swindler, swindling, swiping, theft, thievery, thieving, tinsel, treachery, trick, trickery, trickster, uncandidness, uncandor, unfrankness, unsincereness, untruthfulness, varnish, whited sepulcher, wile, window dressing