fraud

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See also: frauð

English[edit]

English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Etymology[edit]

From Middle English fraude (recorded since 1345), from Old French fraude, a borrowing from Latin fraus (deceit, injury, offence).

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

fraud (countable and uncountable, plural frauds)

  1. (law) The crime of stealing or otherwise illegally obtaining money by use of deception tactics.
    Synonyms: swindle, scam, deceit, grift
  2. Any act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved or unlawful gain.
    • 1712 May, [Alexander Pope], “The Rape of the Locke. An Heroi-comical Poem.”, in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations. [], London: [] Bernard Lintott [], →OCLC, canto II:
      When success a lover's toil attends, / Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends.
    • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion[1]:
      But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.
  3. The assumption of a false identity to such deceptive end.
  4. A person who performs any such trick.
    Synonyms: faker, fraudster, imposter, trickster; see also Thesaurus:deceiver
  5. (obsolete) A trap or snare.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

fraud (third-person singular simple present frauds, present participle frauding, simple past and past participle frauded)

  1. (obsolete) To defraud

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

Norwegian Nynorsk[edit]

Noun[edit]

fraud f

  1. (pre-1938) alternative form of frau