cheat
Americanverb (used with object)
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cheats,
present (3rd person singular)
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cheated,
past participle, past
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cheating
present participle
verb (used without object)
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cheats,
present (3rd person singular)
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cheated,
past participle, past
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cheating
present participle
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to practice fraud or deceit.
She cheats without regrets.
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to violate rules or regulations.
He cheats at cards.
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to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers.
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Informal. to be sexually unfaithful (often followed byon ).
Her husband knew she had been cheating all along. He cheated on his wife.
noun
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cheats
plural
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a person who acts dishonestly, deceives, or defrauds.
He is a cheat and a liar.
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a fraud; swindle; deception.
The game was a cheat.
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Law. the fraudulent obtaining of another's property by a pretense or trick.
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an impostor.
The man who passed as an earl was a cheat.
verb
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to deceive or practise deceit, esp for one's own gain; trick or swindle (someone)
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(intr) to obtain unfair advantage by trickery, as in a game of cards
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(tr) to escape or avoid (something unpleasant) by luck or cunning
to cheat death
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informal to be sexually unfaithful to (one's wife, husband, or lover)
noun
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a person who cheats
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a deliberately dishonest transaction, esp for gain; fraud
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informal sham
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law the obtaining of another's property by fraudulent means
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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
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cheaternoun
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outcheatverb (used with object)
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cheatableadjective
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uncheatedadjective
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uncheatingadjective
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cheatinglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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cheatsimple
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cheatssimple
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have cheatedperfect
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has cheatedperfect
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am cheatingprogressive
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are cheatingprogressive
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is cheatingprogressive
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have been cheatingperfect progressive
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has been cheatingperfect progressive
Past
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cheatedsimple
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had cheatedperfect
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was cheatingprogressive
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were cheatingprogressive
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had been cheatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cheat
1325–75; Middle English chet (noun) (aphetic for achet, variant of eschet escheat ); cheten to escheat, derivative of chet (noun)
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."
Vocabulary lists containing cheat
Words for the World Series
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"The Three Chicarrones"
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Unit 18, Lesson 4
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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.
See Examples For:
Flynn canceled his flight to Mexico and extolled the justice system that he had been ready to cheat as a fugitive.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
Weigh those cons against the things AI has reliably proven it can do – cheat on homework and write janky code – and it’s easy to understand Sanders’ urge to stand and yell “stop!”
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
Sasha Rand, 14, took her pink travel mahjong set to Camp Nock-a-Mixon, near Allentown, Penn., armed with a cheat sheet so the newbies could easily see which suits go together.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Past findings produced by Wada suggest micro-dosing could evade detection methods, and so the scope to cheat in professional sport remains, meaning all efforts must be taken to ensure nobody beats the system.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
But I worried that if people from other countries passed as Puerto Ricans in order to cheat the government, it reflected badly on us.
From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago
Julie Su, Mamdani’s deputy mayor for economic justice, referenced Shorris’s experience going after tax cheats as an example of the kind of work that fits into the mayor’s agenda for economic justice.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
He even cheats at golf, determined to “win” the game that most depends on personal integrity.
From Salon ● Jun. 13, 2026
Filtering out dating cheats was also behind the creation of Cherry dating.
From BBC ● May 21, 2026
If tax cheats want to lose money, that’s their problem.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 18, 2026
“Now, now, a boy who cheats at cards should be able to answer that.”
From "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, he’s got baggage, he cheated on his wife.’
From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026
Freya said feeling monitored had cheated her out of the carefree night life Millennials enjoyed growing up.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
Although receipt of the letter does not indicate that someone definitively cheated, an unspecified number of cases have been referred to district attorneys for prosecution, the spokesperson said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026
You, understandably, feel cheated out of a couple of hundred thousand dollars that would have made a difference to you, and especially to your brother.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 6, 2026
She was the daughter of King Laomedon, who had cheated Apollo and Poseidon of their wages after at Zeus’s command they had built for the King the walls of Troy.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
The era of AI cheating, deepfakes and North Korean remote workers is ushering in new screening tactics.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
Nearly all are requiring ethics courses along the way — as educators continue to grapple with cheating and with fears that heavy AI use will erode critical thinking.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
And most people contend that plagiarism, cheating and ghostwriting are all cut from the same cloth because they all lack the spark that we ascribe to truly original thinking and writing.
From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2026
Kenyan civil servant Geoffrey Mosiria called for the series to be banned in Kenya, arguing that it conflates polygamy with cheating, fraud and abuse.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
“Don’t think that’s not cheating, Humble. Any more and you’re out.”
From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini
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.
