con artist
Americannoun
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con artists
plural
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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.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
Don’t get lured into a clever, obscure get-rich-quick scheme sold to you by a plausible-sounding con artist.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 18, 2026
A con artist is someone whose craft is to win your trust.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Hiding her true identity behind more than 40 aliases, con artist Annie Gordon Baillie made a living swindling shopkeepers across Victorian Britain.
From BBC ● May 22, 2025
No one is easier to con than a con artist, precisely because they are so susceptible to flattery.
From Salon ● Mar. 12, 2025
I just wasn’t that much of a con artist.
From "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Saenz
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.
