Grifter

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɡɹɪftɚ/

Definitions

1. A person who uses deception and manipulation to obtain money or valuables from unsuspecting victims through fraudulent schemes
2. Someone who exploits others by engaging in dishonest confidence tricks and scams to gain financial benefit
3. An individual who tricks others by dishonest means to steal money or valuables

Etymology: "Grifter" started life in the American circus. In the early 1900s, carnival workers used "grift" as slang for the money they made by cheating the public, and a grifter was the person doing the cheating. The first recorded use dates to 1906, and the term grew out of the older word "grafter," meaning a corrupt person who took bribes, a close relative that shares its roots in the same sense of profiting unfairly. The word's path from the midway to ordinary speech is a matter of gradual broadening. What began as a narrow term for carnival swindlers spread to describe any con artist or small-time cheat, the sort of person who works a crowd rather than the marketplace. Its meaning stayed close to its original sense of swindling people out of money. The word then waited a long time before its revival. It was popularized online around the late 2010s, when it became a common label for scammers and hustlers in internet culture.

Synonyms: swindler, con artist, scammer