con artist

noun

Informal.

1. a person adept at lying, cajolery, or glib self-serving talk.

2. a person adept at swindling by means of confidence games; swindler.

Example Sentences

The magician Ricky Jay’s compendium of actual “unique, eccentric and amazing entertainers” offers a parade of con artists, charlatans, escapologists, daredevils, mesmerists, contortionists and sideshow acts.

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A convicted con artist who was the subject of a popular 2022 Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler, has been arrested in Georgia, local officials said.

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What kind of con artist cons the con man into thinking he believes this bile.

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It’s easy to see why Chishiya has such a magnetic appeal at the close of a year when audiences obsessed over stories of con artists infiltrating society’s most exclusive strata.

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The con artist promises his audience they're in on the con, and they will work together to cheat someone else.

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Related Words

• con man 
• crook 
• hustler 
• swindler 

When To Use

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.