Adjacent Words

scam definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a fraudulent business scheme [syn: scam, cozenage] v
1: deprive of by deceit; "He swindled me out of my inheritance"; "She defrauded the customers who trusted her"; "the cashier gypped me when he gave me too little change" [syn: victimize, swindle, rook, goldbrick, nobble, diddle, bunco, defraud, scam, mulct, gyp, gip, hornswoggle, short-change, con]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: origin unknown Date: 1963 a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation <an insurance scam> II. transitive verb (scammed; scamming) Date: 1963 1. deceive, defraud 2. to obtain (as money) by a scam • scammer noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. US sl. 1 a trick or swindle; a fraud. 2 a story or rumour. Etymology: 20th c.: orig. unkn.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(scams) A scam is an illegal trick, usually with the purpose of getting money from people or avoiding paying tax. (INFORMAL) They believed they were participating in an insurance scam, not a murder... = swindle N-COUNT

Moby Thesaurus

ballot-box stuffing, beat, beguile of, bilk, bunco, burn, cardsharping, cheat, cheating, chisel, chouse, chouse out of, cog, cog the dice, con, cozen, cozenage, crib, defraud, diddle, diddling, dishonesty, do in, do out of, dodge, euchre, finagle, fishy transaction, flam, fleece, flimflam, fob, fraud, fraudulence, fraudulency, fudge, gerrymandering, gouge, graft, grift, gull, gyp, gyp joint, have, hocus, hocus-pocus, illicit business, imposition, imposture, mulct, pack the deal, pigeon, practice fraud upon, racket, rook, screw, sell gold bricks, shave, shortchange, stack the cards, stick, sting, swindle, take a dive, thimblerig, throw a fight, victimize