grifter
/ˈɡɹɪftɚ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.47 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A con artist; someone who pulls confidence games; a swindler, scammer, huckster, hustler, and/or charlatan.
American usage; Informal
noun
A manipulator or otherwise generally corrupt person who "games" a system, group of people, or other entity for selfish gains; especially of a political "sell-out" perceived as lacking integrity.
Colloquial
noun
A YouTuber or other content creator who produces low-effort content critiquing a particular franchise or trend, particularly content perceived as ragebait or done for monetary gain.
Derogatory
Example Sentences
- "We're all grifters. So we sell each other out for a nickel."
- "That was the train the drunks and the sinners rode—the gambling men and the grifters, the big-time spenders, the skirt-chasers, and all the jolly crew."
- "From the small-time grifters like Anna Sorokin, who adopted the last name Delvey to masquerade in downtown New York circles as a European heiress for four years before she was convicted of second-degree grand larceny in 2019, […] all impostors come equipped with a tall tale and a look to match."
- "The latest act in the Madness of King Donald drama playing globally on every channel underlined the increasingly delusional world the anti-hero inhabits, his fantasies fed and indulged by a cast of sycophants, lackeys and straight grifters, all in it for what they can get."
- "That tiny blue slice is what’s left of the Coalition (both Liberals and Nationals), squeezed between the teals and a barbarian horde of mouthbreathers, grifters and flat-out, flat-earth fucking weirdos gathered under the bright-orange war banner of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation — or, as they would officially henceforth be known, His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition."
- "But with changing technology, criticism has entered a new era thanks to YouTube and live streaming. In the middle of all this growth is a pseudo-intellectual fungus which seems to be spreading rapidly. In my article about Box Office numbers I mentioned the phrase “grifter critic”."
Etymology
From grift + -er; or probably an alteration of grafter (“a corrupt person, one who accepts bribes”), which is essentially a doublet of the same word. Originally circus slang (carny; compare shill of similar semantics), gradually widened in sense. First attested in 1906; popularized online circa late 2010s.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɡɹɪftɚ/
- British English: /ˈɡɹɪftə/
Usage
- American usage
- Informal
- Colloquial
- Derogatory