cheat
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
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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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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:
Searching for "secret information" that could help it cheat the evaluation, the OpenAI system "chained together multiple attack vectors, including using stolen credentials".
From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026
“When I think about what’s most important in college, it is learning to think through things. My deepest fear about this technology is that it is allowing students cheat codes to avoid thinking things through.”
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 22, 2026
But some students and admissions consultants view it as a cheat code.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
“They’re learning that people who don’t cheat are suckers.”
From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026
You wish you were smart enough to cheat your way in, I want to spit back—but I take a deep breath and force my reply down.
From "Warcross" by Marie Lu
Mr. Firth’s team cheats, however, by using a handheld doohickey—a thingamabob—that controls minds, renders fire trucks invisible and can even restore electrical power.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026
In other words, they’re not just culinary cheats.
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 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
Rumour-mongers are the original fourth estate, journalists who inform society about and thus protect it from cheats and freeloaders.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
The cheater is just as insecure, if not more, than the person who’s scared to get cheated on.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 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
The JPMorgan strategists did wonder if the AI chatbots cheated.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
The ensuing report also expresses skepticism about the grandmaster’s rapidly improving over-the-board play but finds no proof that Mr. Niemann cheated at Sinquefield.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026
That a single bond trader might be paid $47 million a year and feel cheated.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
I’m cheating a little, because both records were part of the same sessions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
Yet we figured that the antics of Diego Maradona and David Beckham, a taste for brazen cheating, and the existence of an actual war made for a bulletproof argument.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
Sandoval, known for the Scandoval cheating scandal that erupted on the hit Bravo series “Vanderpump Rules” in 2023, filed a temporary restraining order against Robinson and her father J. Will Robinson on June 25.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2026
The chess body said combating cheating remained one of its highest priorities, but it stressed that such allegations must be handled through its established procedures.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
She looked at me skeptically, and for a moment I wondered if she’d noticed me cheating off her exam.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
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.
