cheat

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See also: Cheat

English[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /tʃiːt/
  • Audio (US)
    		(file)
  • Rhymes: -iːt

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English cheten, an aphetic variant of acheten, escheten, from Old French escheoiter, from the noun (see below). Displaced native Old English beswīcan.

Verb[edit]

cheat (third-person singular simple present cheats, present participle cheating, simple past and past participle cheated)

  1. (intransitive) To violate rules in order to gain, or attempt to gain, advantage from a situation.
    Synonym: break the rules
    My brother flunked biology because he cheated on his mid-term.
  2. (intransitive) To be unfaithful to one's spouse or partner.
    My husband cheated on me with his secretary.
    After he found out his wife cheated, he left her.
  3. (transitive) To manage to avoid something even though it seemed inevitable.
    He cheated death when his car collided with a moving train.
    I feel as if I've cheated fate.
  4. (transitive) To deceive; to fool; to trick.
    Synonyms: belirt, blench, lirt
    My ex-wife cheated me out of $40,000.
    He cheated his way into office.
    • 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene ii]:
      I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of this island.
    • 1819 July 31​, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “Rural Life in England”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number II, New York, N.Y.: […] C. S. Van Winkle, […], OCLC 1090970992, page 130:
      [T]he holly providentially planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and throw in a gleam of green summer to cheer the fireside:—all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind.
    • 2018, Peter Smith, quoting Johnny Rotten, Sex Pistols: The Pride of Punk, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page xxvi:
      The gig ended with Rotten uttering the now famous line, “Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?” On January 17, the Sex Pistols split up.
Translations[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

From Middle English chete, an aphetic form of eschete, escheat (“the reversion of property to the state if there are no legal claimants”), from Anglo-Norman escheat, Old French eschet, escheit, escheoit (“that which falls to one”), from the past participle of eschoir (“to fall”) (modern French échoir), from Vulgar Latin *excadō, from Latin ex + cadō (“I fall”).

Noun[edit]

cheat (plural cheats)

  1. Someone who cheats.
    Synonym: (informal) cheater
  2. An act of deception or fraud; that which is the means of fraud or deception.
    Synonyms: fraud, trick, imposition, imposture
  3. The weed cheatgrass.
  4. (card games) A card game where the goal is to have no cards remaining in a hand, often by telling lies.
    Synonyms: bullshit, BS, I doubt it
  5. (video games) A hidden means of gaining an unfair advantage in a video game, often by entering a cheat code.
    • 1992, Phil Howard, Cheat Mode (in Amstrad Action issue 76, January 1992, page 32)
      I've had a number of requests for a cheat for Turrican the first. Yes, there is a keypress built in […]
Synonyms[edit]
Translations[edit]
Derived terms[edit]
Descendants[edit]
  • → French: cheat
  • → German: Cheat

Further reading[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

English cheat

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

cheat m (plural cheats)

  1. (video games) cheat
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