con artist - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A clipping of confidence artist.

con artist (plural con artists)

  1. A person who uses confidence tricks to defraud or swindle people after first gaining their trust with a series of confidence games; a scam operator, confidence trickster.
    Synonyms: conman, con; see also Thesaurus:confidence trickster, Thesaurus:deceiver
    That greedy con artist would swindle you at any cost.
    • 2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎[1], archived from the original on 20 April 2022:
      He's the FBI agent antagonist in Catch Me If You Can (2002) opposite a buoyantly charming young Leonardo DiCaprio as con artist Frank Abagnale, but his character is more of a determined cat to Leo's mouse than a real foil; he's simply a prim Eisenhower-era man with a job to do.
    • 2021 February 23, Rafael Behr, “Brexit is a machine to generate perpetual grievance. It's doing its job perfectly”, in The Guardian‎[2], archived from the original on 6 March 2021:
      Leavers will be attracted to that story because it spares them the discomfort of admitting that they voted for a con, and then made a prime minister of the con artist.

scam operator, conman

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