shill
/ʃɪl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.68 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any person enthusiastically endorsing a product; especially, one who is getting paid for the endorsement.
Derogatory
noun
An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game, such as an accomplice of the seller who bids to drive up the price.
verb
To promote or endorse in return for payment, especially dishonestly; sometimes extended sarcastically even to those not paid but strongly biased in favor.
Derogatory; Intransitive verb; Transitive verb
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "carnival barkers and their shills, fleecing the rubes"
- "Witnesses have testified that Jim Jones (like a few other professional faith-healers) used shills part of the time […]"
- "You’ve Got Mail is certainly the basic model for the plot, which finds corporate candy shill Joel ([Paul] Rudd) and indie-sweetshop owner Molly ([Amy] Poehler) regaling their dinner companions with the very long, digressive story of how they met and fell in love."
- "On the screen, there was that quack again, playing the shill for yet another drug company."
- "kill yourself ai shill and stop fucking spamming the catalog"
- "No one but the most delusional sony shill thinks killzone is good. so probably most people on this board"
Etymology
Unknown; attested as verb 1914, as noun 1916. Perhaps an abbreviation of shillaber, attested 1913. The word entered English via carny, originally denoting a carnival worker who pretends to be a member of the audience in an attempt to elicit interest in an attraction. Speculatively an extended form of German Schieber (“black marketeer, profiteer”) via *shi-la-ber. There are some suggestions that it originates in the surname Shilaber or Shillibeer, especially George Shillibeer, but proposed origins are dubious as the word is first attested in North America in the 20th century, while proposed models are 19th century British. American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (1814–1890) was known to write under the name Mrs. Ruth Partington to lend credibility to some of his ideas. This is one more possible origin of the word, although there is no specific evidence supporting a connection.