grifter
Americannoun
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grifters
plural
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a person who operates a side show at a circus, fair, etc., especially a gambling attraction.
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a swindler, dishonest gambler, or the like.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of grifter
Explanation
A grifter is a con artist: someone who swindles people out of money through fraud. If there's one type of person you don't want to trust, it's a grifter: someone who cheats others out of money. Grifters are also known as chiselers, defrauders, gougers, scammers, swindlers, and flim-flam men. Selling a bridge and starting a Ponzi scheme are things a grifter might do. The difference between a grifter and a thief is a grifter tricks you out of money through lies, while the thief takes it by force. The end result is the same.
Vocabulary lists containing grifter
"A Novelist Who Made Crime an Art, and His Bad Guys ‘Fun’"
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The Girls I've Been
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The Wrong Way Home
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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:
After meeting Skalnik, Ms. Colloff thought the grifter would acknowledge his duplicity, before she came to believe that he simply saw her as his latest mark.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
He was a grifter who spent your grandmother’s money, tried to spend your inheritance and his wife is continuing that not-so-grand tradition.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2025
The judge’s ruling that Smyth should be extradited could help bring about the end of a bizarre saga in which victims have painted Smyth as a master of disguise and a veteran traveling grifter.
From Seattle Times ● May 9, 2024
As a new version of Tom Ripley arrives, here is a look at how this grifter has evolved over the generations.
From New York Times ● Apr. 3, 2024
Low Key, who was a grifter from Minnesota, smiled his scarred smile.
From "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
"Whenever there is a crisis -- especially in the health space -- the grifters are gonna come out," said Timothy Caulfield, a misinformation expert and professor at the University of Alberta.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
The military swarms in to build a metal wall around the titanic alien, and Blunt’s cozy community of 700 swells to more than 100,000: scientists, journalists, tourists, opportunists and the inevitable grifters, criminals and weirdos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026
Recently, that has been our community colleges, where millions in federal student aid has been lost to grifters who use bots to sign up for classes, receive government money to help with school, then disappear.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 7, 2026
The rush of pseudoscientists, grifters, wellness influencers, and celebrity advocates into the space only made the chronic Lyme debate more fraught.
From Slate ● Dec. 19, 2025
Chaos had followed the fall of the South, just as war-ravaged societies always attract thieves and grifters.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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.
