grift
/ɡrɪft
/North American informal
verb [no object]
Engage in petty or small-scale swindling: how long have you been grifting?...
- Sooner rather than later, Gus' funds begin to run out, so he begins grifting for money.
- His exceptional skills at grifting combined with his good looks have allowed him to believe that he can con anybody.
- The #1 rule of grifting is to con the mark in such a way that they don't want to turn you in.
noun
A petty or small-scale swindle: a Sixth Avenue palmistry grift...
- And Martha discovers that there is a dear price to pay for buying into a world of grifts, scams, and dishonesty.
- Because the movie is too lazy to set up some grifts, Reilly and Luna are established as out-and-out thieves.
- Only when Ann Merai and her husband - along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars - go up in smoke, does Matt realize that he's been entangled in an elaborate grift, where every single clue winds up pointing towards him.
Derivatives
grifter
/ noun ...- Not only has spam quadrupled but the spammers' technology and methods also have been adopted by virus writers, grifters, and thieves.
- The search for this loot has gotten a lot of media attention - and apparently become the focus of scams being run by Internet grifters.
- A few of these grifters have been jailed, including a Texas man sentenced in January to 6 1/2 years in prison and ordered to repay the government about $1.2 million.
Origin
Early 20th century: alteration of graft3.