Conning

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Tricking or deceiving another person ; studying or learning something attentively and thoroughly
2. Engaging in acts of deception to mislead someone ; applying concentrated effort to absorb information or skills
3. Using cunning to cheat or swindle someone ; dedicating focused attention to understanding or memorizing material

Etymology: Before it meant tricking someone, "con" was a Middle English verb meaning "to know" or "to learn," the root of the same idea in "cunning." The verb "to con" in the sense of studying or memorizing (as in "con a lesson") still survives from that older branch. The sense of deceiving someone came later, and the source suggests it grew from a shortening: "con" was clipped from "con trick," itself a shortening of "confidence trick," a swindle built on winning a victim's trust. Once clipped, the bare word could stand alone as a verb for fraud, and "conning" is simply its present participle and gerund form, so "conning someone" describes the act of running such a scheme. The source also offers a more colorful, if uncertain, possibility: that "con" is a clipping of an old word for "squirrel," traced through Old English forms like "āqueorna" and "ācurna." Dictionaries present that link only as a perhaps, so it is best treated as a tentative side path rather than settled history.

Synonyms: deceiving, tricking

Antonyms: honesty, sincerity