cheat

American  

[cheet] / tʃit /

verb (used with object)

• cheats,
  present (3rd person singular)
• cheated,
  past participle,  past
• cheating
  present participle

1. to defraud; swindle.

   He cheated her out of her inheritance.

   Synonyms:

   fool, hoax, con, gull, delude, dupe, mislead

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.

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verb (used without object)

• cheats,
  present (3rd person singular)
• cheated,
  past participle,  past
• cheating
  present participle

1. to practice fraud or deceit.

   She cheats without regrets.

2. to violate rules or regulations.

   He cheats at cards.

3. to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers.

4. Informal. to be sexually unfaithful (often followed byon ).

   Her husband knew she had been cheating all along. He cheated on his wife.

noun

• cheats
  plural

1. a person who acts dishonestly, deceives, or defrauds.

   He is a cheat and a liar.

   Synonyms:

   mountebank, phony, fake, fraud, charlatan, dodger, sharper, trickster, swindler

2. a fraud; swindle; deception.

   The game was a cheat.

   Synonyms:

   hoax, trick, artifice, imposture

3. Law. the fraudulent obtaining of another's property by a pretense or trick.

4. an impostor.

   The man who passed as an earl was a cheat.

cheat British  

/ tʃiːt /

verb

1. to deceive or practise deceit, esp for one's own gain; trick or swindle (someone)

2. (intr) to obtain unfair advantage by trickery, as in a game of cards

3. (tr) to escape or avoid (something unpleasant) by luck or cunning

   to cheat death

4. informal to be sexually unfaithful to (one's wife, husband, or lover)

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noun

1. a person who cheats

2. a deliberately dishonest transaction, esp for gain; fraud

3. informal sham

4. law the obtaining of another's property by fraudulent means

5. the usual US name for rye-brome

Synonym Usage

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.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• cheater
  noun
• outcheat
  verb (used with object)
• cheatable
  adjective
• uncheated
  adjective
• uncheating
  adjective
• cheatingly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• cheats
  plural

Participles

• cheating
  present
• cheated
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• cheat
  simple
• cheats
  simple
• have cheated
  perfect
• has cheated
  perfect
• am cheating
  progressive
• are cheating
  progressive
• is cheating
  progressive
• have been cheating
  perfect progressive
• has been cheating
  perfect progressive

Past

• cheated
  simple
• had cheated
  perfect
• was cheating
  progressive
• were cheating
  progressive
• had been cheating
  perfect progressive

Future

• will cheat
  simple
• will have cheated
  perfect
• will be cheating
  progressive
• will have been cheating
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of cheat

1325–75; Middle English chet (noun) (aphetic for achet, variant of eschet escheat ); cheten to escheat, derivative of chet (noun)

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Explanation

To cheat is to use sneaky, unfair methods to get something you want. No one's going to want to play with you if you always cheat at mini golf. Some people cheat at cards, and others cheat during math tests by copying from the student beside them. In either case, they're trying to succeed using underhanded tricks. You can refer to someone who does this as a cheat as well. Cheat comes from the Old French escheat, a legal term for the state taking someone's property when he or she dies without heirs. This practice was resented, and it came to mean "confiscate unfairly."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cheat cheats cheated cheating

"But should that happen I would still see it as just a game. At the end of the day you can't cheat with lines of code."

From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026

He added: "I am a genuine applicant, not a benefits cheat and I need a blue badge."

From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026

If cheating is wrong, how come so many cheat?

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026

The Nightingale data points to another type of phenomenon: agents trying to cheat during training runs, in which OpenAI tries to shape the bots’ behavior.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026

“And Mong just stood over him sayin’ the same thing over and over: ‘I didn’t cheat! I didn’t cheat!’

From "We Were Here" by Matt De La Peña

The move, orchestrated by Everett to satisfy the demands of the company’s top-dollar backers, cheats Michael out of his stock options and equity in the company.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026

He even regularly cheats at golf because he’s so incapable of playing fair.

From Salon ● Oct. 16, 2026

But no one has figured out a way of punishing cheats without imposing unfair costs on innocent bystanders.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026

Athletes, he says, need to be assured the Olympics are clean and cheats will not be tolerated.

From BBC ● May 23, 2026

Shaggy Hair doesn’t like to play as much as I do, but he doesn’t talk all the time and he never cheats, so I like it when he plays.

From "The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman" by Gennifer Choldenko

Everybody hates them, everyone thinks that they cheated and he just walks on the pitch and says, 'give me the ball lads, let me have some fun'.

From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2026

Researchers also gave Claude an impossible task and measured desperation rising on its own with each failure, until the model cheated.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026

The video alleging the Patriots may have cheated on field goals.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026

The Times has interviewed more than a dozen clients and investors who said they were cheated by Holdo.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2026

Believing he was cheated out of the presidency, Jackson immediately began to campaign against Adams and easily defeated him in 1828 in one of the nastiest presidential races ever.

From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis

Carl, 47, and Laura, 48, say their book should not be mistaken for a manual on how to sustain the best marriage, or how to magically get over cheating.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2026

But when does it cross a line from being acceptable to unethical, or even cheating?

From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026

Mr. Anderson covers it all, from Tom Brady’s high-school struggles to the NFL’s infamous $20 million “deflate-gate” investigation, during which the Patriots were accused of cheating, to his difficult divorce.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

Sandpapergate, the scandal that engulfed Australia eight years ago, was blatant cheating played out in real time on live television to a global audience.

From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026

Mama said it was because he used to buy flour from a man who Papa suspected was cheating him.

From "A Place to Belong" by Cynthia Kadohata

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Related Words

• bilk
• con
• deceive
• defraud
• delude
• dupe
• fleece
• hoodwink
• mislead
• swindle
• trick
• victimize

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