con artist
Americannoun
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a person adept at lying, cajolery, or glib self-serving talk.
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a person adept at swindling by means of confidence games; swindler.
Usage
What does con artist mean? A con artist is a person who cheats people out of something (usually money or other valuables) through some kind of deceitful scheme. More generally, the term is used to refer to someone who’s good at deceiving people for their own gain. In con artist, the word con is short for confidence, a reference to how they gain their victims’ trust in order to cheat them. The same term is used in con man (a male con artist). The word artist in this context simply refers to a person who is skillful (in this case, at trickery and deception). Example: I can’t believe how many people are falling for this guy’s tricks—he’s clearly a con artist who’s going to cheat and pocket all the money.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Con artist Anna Delvey, whose life story inspired the Netflix series Inventing Anna, has signed up to be a contestant on Dancing With The Stars, the US version of Strictly Come Dancing.
From BBC • Sep. 4, 2024
Con artist, but I would like to it to be about us, more than that.
From Salon • Apr. 19, 2022
Con artist Ian McKellen puts the moves on wealthy widow Helen Mirren when the two great British thespians share the screen for the first time in director Bill Condon’s 2019 caper “The Good Liar.”
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 5, 2020
Con artist stories provide an ideal framework for a problematic love story, with their natural focus on duplicity and the question of whether someone can be trusted in the long run.
From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2017
Con artist Wayne Simmons created an elaborate life story.
From Salon • Oct. 16, 2015
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
