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:
"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
While he says he would never use the tech to cheat on assessments he knows people who would.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
Without this essential record of why an AI did what it did, we could become blind to the drivers of AIs’ attempts to hack, cheat and perform other malicious acts, researchers say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
OpenAI this week proposed new guidelines for documenting and monitoring reinforcement learning training runs for cutting-edge models, including penalizing models that cheat during training to avoid reinforcing that behavior.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
“Don’t cheat on these,” Keeth said to me, noting the look of doubt on my face.
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
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
Reward hacking is the AI version of videogame cheats.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
Filtering out dating cheats was also behind the creation of Cherry dating.
From BBC ● May 21, 2026
‘Wicked masster cheats us; cheats Sméagol, gollum. He musstn’t go that way. He musstn’t hurt Preciouss. Give it to Sméagol, yess, give it to us! Give it to uss!’
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
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
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, he’s got baggage, he cheated on his wife.’
From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026
Using stolen identities, AI tools and U.S. accomplices, its operatives have cheated their way into remote jobs in an effort to earn money for Kim Jong Un’s regime.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
If it was brave to have identified a thoroughly bad person, then it was wrong of him to turn up with the twins like that, and she felt cheated.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Another marriage stemming from the great “Good Morning America” cheating scandal of 2022 is imminent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2026
Together they’ve written a book called “Overcoming Infidelity,” which mixes self-help and autobiography to guide readers on navigating the aftermath of cheating and betrayal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2026
This is happening, it writes, "despite the furore over the cheating scandal".
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
Lily managed to wrangle the car from our lying, cheating father.
From "It All Comes Down to This" by Karen English
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
