grift
Plural: grifts
Noun
- A confidence game or swindle.
Verb
Verb Forms: grifted, grifting, grifts
- To swindle or engage in petty confidence tricks.
- To obtain illegally, as by con game.
- To obtain money illegally.
- To obtain money immorally or through deceitful means.
Examples
- He tried to grift his opponent by pretending to miscount his Words With Friends score.
- Hey, what's the grift? What are you trying to pull?
Origin / Etymology
American criminal underworld slang, 1906 (noun), 1915 (verb), alteration of graft (“corruption, illicit profit through corrupt means, bribe, one's occupation”), alteration perhaps influenced by similar sounding words, e.g. drift, etc., probably ultimately from Middle Dutch graft (“digging, ditch, canal, trench”) (modern Dutch gracht), related to Dutch graven (“to dig”), English grave (“to dig”).
Synonyms
Abraham work, Punic faith, deceit, deception, dupery, fiddle, jugglery, list, mislead, rinky-dink, ruse, subterfuge, swack, trickery
Scrabble Score: 9
grift: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordgrift: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
grift: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary