cheat

[cheet] /tʃit/
verb (used with object)
1.
to defraud; swindle:
He cheated her out of her inheritance.
2.
to deceive; influence by fraud:
He cheated us into believing him a hero.
3.
to elude; deprive of something expected:
He cheated the law by suicide.
verb (used without object)
4.
to practice fraud or deceit:
She cheats without regrets.
5.
to violate rules or regulations:
He cheats at cards.
6.
to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers.
7.
Informal. to be sexually unfaithful (often followed by on):
Her husband knew she had been cheating all along. He cheated on his wife.
noun
8.
a person who acts dishonestly, deceives, or defrauds:
He is a cheat and a liar.
9.
a fraud; swindle; deception:
The game was a cheat.
10.
Law. the fraudulent obtaining of another's property by a pretense or trick.
11.
an impostor:
The man who passed as an earl was a cheat.
Origin
1325-75; Middle English chet (noun) (aphetic for achet, variant of eschet escheat); cheten to escheat, derivative of chet (noun)
Related forms
cheatable, adjective
cheatingly, adverb
outcheat, verb (used with object)
uncheated, adjective
uncheating, adjective
Synonyms
1. mislead, dupe, delude; gull, con; hoax, fool. Cheat, deceive, trick, victimize refer to the use of fraud or artifice deliberately to hoodwink or obtain an unfair advantage over someone. Cheat implies conducting matters fraudulently, especially for profit to oneself: to cheat at cards. Deceive suggests deliberately misleading or deluding, to produce misunderstanding or to prevent someone from knowing the truth: to deceive one's parents. To trick is to deceive by a stratagem, often of a petty, crafty, or dishonorable kind: to trick someone into signing a note. To victimize is to make a victim of; the emotional connotation makes the cheating, deception, or trickery seem particularly dastardly: to victimize a blind man. 8. swindler, trickster, sharper, dodger, charlatan, fraud, fake, phony, mountebank. 9. imposture, artifice, trick, hoax.
Examples from the web for cheating
  • With so much riding on the results of standardized testing, the state is about to adopt new measures to protect against cheating.
  • Academic cheating and dishonesty have long been a problem.
  • The students are sophisticated in music and were aware he was cheating them, and walked out without applause.
  • Somebody started cheating a little bit, and then it became more and more a part of the social norm.
  • cheating is cheating, and its wrongness is not mitigated by how easy it might be.
  • Anyone that has taught undergrads knows how capable they are at cheating.
  • Also the gene-therapy viruses that might lend themselves to cheating don't work as easily as had been hoped.
  • What if an emerging economy was cheating and still using these banned substances.
  • Forensic economists comb through data to look for patterns of cheating that otherwise go unnoticed.
  • Another third were told the player next to them was caught on camera cheating.
British Dictionary definitions for cheating

cheat

/tʃiːt/
verb
1.
to deceive or practise deceit, esp for one's own gain; trick or swindle (someone)
2.
(intransitive) to obtain unfair advantage by trickery, as in a game of cards
3.
(transitive) to escape or avoid (something unpleasant) by luck or cunning: to cheat death
4.
(informal) when intr, usually foll by on. to be sexually unfaithful to (one's wife, husband, or lover)
noun
5.
a person who cheats
6.
a deliberately dishonest transaction, esp for gain; fraud
7.
(informal) sham
8.
(law) the obtaining of another's property by fraudulent means
9.
the usual US name for rye-brome
Derived Forms
cheatable, adjective
cheater, noun
cheatingly, adverb
Word Origin
C14: short for escheat
Word Origin and History for cheating
n.

"deceptiveness, swindling," 1530s, verbal noun from cheat (v.).

cheat

v.

mid-15c., "to escheat," a shortening of Old French escheat, legal term for revision of property to the state when the owner dies without heirs, literally "that which falls to one," past participle of escheoir "befall by chance, happen, devolve," from Vulgar Latin *excadere "to fall away," from Latin ex- "out" (see ex-) + cadere "to fall" (see case (n.1)). Also cf. escheat. The royal officers evidently had a low reputation. Meaning evolved through "confiscate" (mid-15c.) to "deprive unfairly" (1580s). To cheat on (someone) "be sexually unfaithful" first recorded 1934. Related: Cheated; cheating.

n.

late 14c., "forfeited property," from cheat (v.). Meaning "a deceptive act" is from 1640s; earlier, in thieves' jargon, it meant "a stolen thing" (late 16c.), and earlier still "dice" (1530s). Meaning "a swindler" is from 1660s.

Slang definitions & phrases for cheating

cheat

verb

To be sexually unfaithful; get a little on the side (1930s+)


Encyclopedia Article for cheating

A number of high-profile instances involving plagiarism and resume padding that were reported in 2001 continued to capture headlines in 2002 and to bring increased scrutiny to the methodology of cheating. Though historian Doris Kearns Goodwin maintained that the cribbing in her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987) was unintentional, her reputation was severely damaged, and in June she resigned her post on the Pulitzer Prize board. Fellow historian Stephen Ambrose apologized in January for having failed to acknowledge his source material in at least six books. (See Obituaries.) After Piper (Kan.) High School teacher Christine Pelton accused some students of having taken material from the Internet for a botany project, gave them all failing grades in 2001, and had her decision overruled by the school board in December, she resigned in February 2002; other teachers were inspired to follow suit as well, and the handling of the incident sparked a national uproar. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis lost his credibility and was suspended in 2001 for one year from teaching at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass., after it became known that he had fabricated stories about military exploits in Vietnam and subsequent activity in the peace and civil rights movements. Football coach George O'Leary lost his dream job in 2002 at the University of Notre Dame a few days after signing his contract when "inaccuracies" sprang up in his resume.

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