Meaning & use
cheat
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Meanings
verbintransitive
To break rules or behave dishonestly in order to win or gain an advantage.
Grammar: No object: he cheated at cards; often followed by at or on.
Patterns
- cheat at something
- cheat on something
He was banned from the exam for cheating.
Players who cheat at cards are quickly found out.
She never cheated on a test in her life.
verbtransitive
To treat someone unfairly by taking money or something else from them dishonestly.
Grammar: Takes an object: they cheated him out of his savings.
Patterns
- cheat someone out of something
- cheat someone
The dealer cheated her out of a fair price.
They cheated the old man by selling him a fake watch.
He felt cheated after paying for a poor service.
verbintransitiveinformal
To be secretly unfaithful to a romantic partner.
Grammar: Often followed by on: cheat on your partner.
Patterns
- cheat on someone
She found out that her boyfriend had been cheating on her.
He swore he would never cheat on his wife.
nouncountabledisapproving
A person who behaves dishonestly in order to win or gain an advantage.
Grammar: Countable: a cheat; used as an insult in disapproving contexts.
Patterns
- a cheat at something
The club expelled him as a cheat.
Nobody wants to play with a cheat.
The tax cheats were fined heavily.
Word forms
| third person singular | cheats |
|---|---|
| past tense | cheated |
| past participle | cheated |
| -ing form | cheating |
| plural | cheats |
Common combinations
- cheat on an exam
- Students caught cheating on an exam may fail the course.
- cheat at cards
- He cheats at cards whenever he can.
- cheat on someone
- He would not cheat on his partner.
- cheat someone out of money
- The scheme cheated many people out of money.
- cheat death
- The climber cheated death by only a few seconds.
Synonyms and how they differ
- deceive
- Deceive means to make someone believe something false, but does not always involve gaining an advantage.
- swindle
- Swindle describes taking money through a planned trick, which is more serious than cheat.
- defraud
- Defraud is formal and often legal, used for taking money by fraud.
- trick
- Trick can be harmless or playful, while cheat suggests breaking rules for gain.
Opposites
Word family
- cheater noun
- a person who cheats
- cheating noun
- dishonest behavior to win
- cheat sheet noun
- a set of notes used to help remember information
- cheatingly adverb
- rare, in a dishonest way
Commonly confused: cheat or chat?
cheat vs chat
Chat means to talk informally, while cheat means to act dishonestly.
Practice
Which preposition completes the sentence? The shopkeeper cheated her ___ her change.
Choose one answer.
Cheat someone out of something is the standard pattern for taking something dishonestly. Cheat someone of something is possible but rarer and less natural.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cheat”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.