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
Your uncle was a grifter who spent his mother’s money.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2025
He does seem to have undergone several personal changes, picking up mixed martial arts fighting, dressing like an obnoxious dudebro — complete with gold chains — and talking like a masculinity grifter.
From Salon ● Jan. 17, 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
Low Key, who was a grifter from Minnesota, smiled his scarred smile.
From "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
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
Costs for Minnesota’s Medicaid housing program, initially estimated at $2.6 million a year, ballooned to $104 million last year as it became a fund for grifters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 4, 2025
An increasing number of influencers, crypto grifters, “pick-up artists” and gambling websites have come to realize that male isolation creates incredible profit opportunities.
From Salon ● Nov. 17, 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.
