Cheat

“ A fearful oath burst from the Chevalier, and with a bound lie sprung to his feet, and dashed his closed fists against his brow. “Away with your jugglery, have done with your miserable cheat, sir,—that can only terrify women and children. Speak out like a man: who are you, and what are you?” ”

“ My brother and the other two blind men would have cleared themselves of this horrid cheat, but the judge would not hear them: Villains! said he, do you feign yourselves blind then, and under that pretext cheat people, by begging their charity, and abusing poor women? He is a cheat, cried my brother; we take God to witness that none of us can see! ”

“ There might be something loathsome in it, or ominous, to an Englishman of the school of Shakespeare or Scott; who would fight with men only, and loved his hound. But for you—you carnivorous cheats—what, in dog’s or devil’s name, is there horrible in it for you? Do you suppose it isn’t more manly and virtuous to fight a bulldog, than to poison a child, or cheat a fellow who trusts you, or leave a girl to go wild in the streets? And don’t you live, and profess to live—and even insolently proclaim that there’s no other way of living than—by poisoning and cheating? ”

“ He cheats his playmates as a boy, cheats the shopkeeper at every opportunity, enters business as a man intending to cheat, and sticks to that intention with a persistence worthy a better cause to the end of his days—to be cheated by the undertaker and the priest at the finale of his life of deception and fraud. ”

“ He professes the art of cheating; but the art of cheating is to cheat without peril. He is teres et rotundas; strokes fly from the lubricity of his polish, and the shiftings of his circular formation. He who is insensible of the glory of his profession, who is open only to the profit, is no disciple of mine. ”

“ Hawked through the streets our little stock of wares
Spread on a tray, and swinging from our necks,
Pens, pencils, trinkets, brooches, — all mere sham;
Mine were, at least, — what yours were, you know best;
And so, mere boys, we bore along the streets
Our tawdry store, and cried: “Who'll buy? Who'll buy?”
Well, passers bought of me more than of you
Simply because I lied with glib, false tongue,
Vaunted my goods as real, — in a word,
Cheated; of course I cheated, if I could.
What's any trade but cheating? All the world
Strove to cheat me, and I strove to cheat them. ”

“ I could not avoid sneering, "to most of us it would seem that the mischief was done when you accused a brother-officer of fraud to his face."
He seemed to reflect. "Yes, sir," he assented slowly; "it is done. I saw him cheat: that I must persist in; but I cannot say how far he was conscious of it. And since I cannot, I must take the consequences."
"Will you kindly inform us how it is possible for a player to cheat and not know that he is cheating?" ”

“ Cheat nowadays means to cozen or defraud, and lexicographers [13] have tortured etymology for an original—but without success. Escheats and escheatours have been named, but with great doubts; indeed, Stevens, the learned commentator on Shakspeare, acknowledged that he “did not recollect to have met with the word cheat in our ancient writers.” [12] Cheat, to defraud, then, is no other than an old Cant term somewhat altered in its meaning, [13] and as such it should be described in the next etymological dictionary. ”

“ CHAP. XIII. At the execution of a Felon several Cheaters meet, and seeing a Countrey-man draw a Purse of money resolve to cheat him of it, which they do first by a brass Chain, and afterwards by drawing him in to bet at Gameing. They were again cheated by mine Host, and the principal Cheat comically punished. ”

“ The suffix corresponding to the -hart and -ling of German slang is -mans, as in lightmans, day, darkmans, night, ruffmans, the woods. The word cheat, a thing (whether this is etymologically connected with the verb to cheat is uncertain) , is used to form a great variety of descriptive compounds, such as grunting cheat, a pig, bleting cheat, a sheep, cackling cheat, a cock or capon, mofling cheat, a napkin, smelling cheat, the nose, pratling cheat, the tongue. ”

“ A cheat, who, by intrigues, cabals, and cunning, tried to attain the object she yearned for so intensely, namely, to lie at the feet of a noble and eminent man, as she is doing now, and to tell him that she loves him. ”

“ Cheating was elementary, and rarely did much harm but to the successful cheat; at times a neighbour passed a leaden dollar on a friend, was soon detected, and was branded as a thief; at times a man slaughtered a neighbour’s cow, and sold the hide, stole a good horse, or perpetrated some piece of petty villainy, sufficient by its transparent folly to reassure the world that he was quite uncivilized, and not fit by his exertions ever to grow rich. ”

“ Thus a too artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called stellionate, and a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very foundations of our security in written documents. But one will have greater indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness. ”

“ Presently I came to where the man of the thimbles was standing, with the table before him, and many people about him. "Them who finds, wins, and them who can't find, loses," he cried. Various individuals tried to find the pellet, but all were unsuccessful, till at last considerable dissatisfaction was expressed, and the terms rogue and cheat were lavished upon him. "Never cheated anybody in all my life!" he cried; and, observing me at hand, "Didn't I play fair, my lord?" ”

“ Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; ”

“ Comment, Mademoiselle? Vous appelez cela cheat? Corriger la fortune, l'enchainer sous ses doigts, etre sur de son fait, dat you call cheat? ”

“ I have no idea of refusing, but when I think that that lying cheat, Darwen, is getting £750 a year, it makes me feel pretty sick."
"I know, Jack; we see these things in the Church the same as everywhere else; the cheat seems sometimes to prosper. Why it should be so, I cannot comprehend; the cheat must inevitably cheat himself as the liar lies to himself, so that they both live in a sort of fool's paradise; they both unaccountably get hold of the wrong end of the stick ”

“ I believe if a man had ever been inclined to cheat he would have been sorely tempted in this instance, but the game was played absolutely square, and if a man had been caught cheating, the chances are that he would have been shunned by the rest of the officers as long as he was in prison. ”

“ Conscience, boys, is a bogey to frighten the feeble from frolic. Ha ha!
Jonson:
But as a man, aren’t you ashamed to cheat a poor woman?
Chettle:
Have at ye again, lad! In this world we all 110cheat and are cheated. You cheat the groundlings and orange-girls out of their crosses with a bad play when they’ve paid to hear a good ’un, and I cheat by giving soft words instead of coins. And the conclusion! The girls are angry with you, while my hostess is in love with me. True virtue is good-humour, Ben: and a pleasant smile’s more than all the commandments. ”

“ Compare HINDER; OBSTRUCT.
Antonyms: Prepositions:
Arrested for crime, on suspicion, by the sheriff; on, upon, or by virtue of a warrant; on final process; in execution.
ARTIFICE. Synonyms:
A contrivance or device may be either good or bad. A cheat is a mean advantage in a bargain; a fraud, any form of covert robbery or injury. Imposture is a deceitful contrivance for securing charity, credit, or consideration. A stratagem or maneuver may be of the good against the bad, as it were a skilful movement of war. A wile is usually but not necessarily evil. ”

“ None of our Lord’s parables has been as difficult to explain as this one. Learned and pious men have confessed freely, in all ages, that there is much in the parable which they cannot understand; and I am bound to confess the same. The puzzle is, plainly, why our Lord should seem to bid us to copy the conduct of a bad man and a cheat. For this is the usual interpretation. The steward has been cheating his master already. When he is found out and about to be dismissed, he cheats his master still further, by telling his debtors to cheat, and so wins favour with them. ”

“ We must also admit that some mediums are extremely irresponsible and feather-headed people. A friend of mine, who sat with Eusapia Palladino, assured me that he saw her cheat in the most childish and bare-faced fashion, and yet immediately afterwards incidents occurred which were absolutely beyond any, normal powers to produce. ”

“ Probably because undergraduates consider tea only fit for old women.—Oxford.
Bite, a cheat; “a Yorkshire BITE,” a cheating fellow from that county. The term BITE is also applied to a hard bargainer.—North; also [84] old slang—used by Pope. Swift says it originated with a nobleman in his day.
Bite, to cheat; “to be BITTEN,” to be taken in or imposed upon. Originally a Gipsy term. Cross-biter, for a cheat, continually occurs in writers of the sixteenth century. Bailey has CROSS-BITE, a disappointment, probably the primary sense; and BITE is very probably a contraction of this. ”

“ Make cheap, lessen in value. Cheat, v. a. Defraud, trick, deceive, dupe, gull, overreach, jockey, cozen, chouse, outwit, bamboozle, circumvent, delude, hoodwink, diddle, beguile, mislead, inveigle, gammon, impose upon. Cheat, n. 1. Trick, deception, imposture, imposition, juggle, stratagem, finesse, fraud, circumvention, delusion, artifice, deceit, chouse, BAM. 2. Trickster, impostor, rogue, knave, swindler, sharper, cheater, artful fellow. ”

“ When he is discover’d by all the rest of the World, the Cheat passes still upon himself, and he is pleas’d with the terrible Figure he makes in his Glass, tho’ he is ready to shake at his own Shaddow. ”

“ It is (first) a plain downright Crime in the beginning of it; if both the Man and the Woman are in it, they indeed cheat one another; first the Man thinks the Woman has the worst of it, and that he only cheats her; she fancies he has the worst of it, and that she cheats him; but, in short, 'tis a mutual Fraud, wherein both are Cheats and both Cheated, both Deceivers and both Deceived.
When they come to the Book to marry, they mutually engage what was engaged before, like a Knave that borrows Money upon an Estate which he had mortgaged already. ”

“ Deceit and falsehood, whatever conveniencies they may for a time promise or produce, are, in the sum of life, obstacles to happiness. Those, who profit by the cheat, distruat the deceiver, and the act, by which kindness was sought, puts an end to confidence. ”

“ The paper, and recollecting that she had often heard him ealled a cheat and impostor, immediately suspected that he himself had put the halfpence in place of the gold, and made use of that pretext to extort more from her, fell upon him bloodily, telling him she had often heard him ealled a swindler and a rascal, but until now she had never believed it. ”

“ Hen. IV., part 2, act ii, scene 4.
15 It is easy to see how cheat became synonymous with “fraud,” when we remember that it was one of the most common words of the greatest class of cheats in the country.
16 I am reminded by an eminent philologist that the origin of QUEER is seen in the German, QUER, crooked,—hence “odd.” I agree with this etymology, but still have reason to believe that the word was first used in this country in a cant sense. Is it mentioned any where as a respectable term before 1500? ”

“ And in the discussion of the words 'to defraud' it is said that they primarily mean to cheat, that they usually signify the deprivation of something of value by trick, deceit, chicane, or overreaching, and that they do not extend to theft by violence, or to robbery or burglary. ”

“ You can’t cheat just because you’ve been cheated.
Cheated One
[Inflamed—incoherent.] You say cheat to me again? You say cheat to—
Lawyer
[Stepping in to pacify.] Ladies—ladies. Surely there must be a way out of the difficulty. Perhaps we can work out some way to—
Scornful One
To save both of them through Gordon Wallace! ”

“ Yet still we hug the dear deceit,
And still exclaim against the cheat. ”

“ The HORSE-CHEAT.
The ARGUMENT.
The Horse-Cheat lays open the cheating Tricks of those that sell or let out Horses to hire; and shews how those Cheats themselves are sometimes cheated.
AULUS, PHÆDRUS. Aul.Good God! What a grave Countenance our Phaedrus has put on, gaping ever and anon into the Air. I'll attack him. ”

“ Do not talk about cheating. There will be no chance to cheat if you follow the plan just described. Deal with any flagrant case of cheating with extreme privacy; it is a disgrace to provoke children to cheat and you should try to hide the affair and save the culprit from yielding to a similar temptation should you be so unfortunate as to place another one in his way. ”

“ SAUTER LA COUPE, OR SLIPPING THE CARDS. An adept at this trick can cheat and swindle at pleasure. Wherever it is practised the fair player has no 310earthly chance of rising from the table other than a loser. The trick, too, is much practised. By its means the wealth of the unwary and inexperienced player is transferred to the pocket of the cheat. ”

“ As all these things pass through my memory, I recall another little incident with much satisfaction, because I was retained in the case. It was a scandalous fraud in connection with the gaming-table. An action was brought by a cheat against a gentleman who was said to have lost £20,000 on the cast of the dice. I was the counsel opposed to plaintiff, who was said to have cheated by means of loaded dice. ”