Cheater

How to spell cheater

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cheater

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cheater mean?

1. nounA person who acts dishonestly or unfairly to gain an advantage, especially in a game, a test, or a relationship.

Cheater in a sentence

• The card player was exposed as a cheater when the marked deck was found.

• The exam board banned the cheater from sitting any future tests.

Where does cheater come from?

Language of origin: French

Cheater traces back to the verb 'cheat', which began life as a clipped form of the medieval legal word 'escheat'. That word came into English from the Old French 'eschete', meaning property that reverts to a lord or the crown when an owner dies without heirs, ultimately from the Latin 'excadere', literally 'to fall away' or 'fall out', from 'ex' (out) and 'cadere' (to fall). Royal officers called escheators handled such windfalls, and they earned such a reputation for sharp dealing that 'cheat' came to mean defrauding or deceiving someone by the 1500s. The agent suffix '-er', a native English ending marking the doer of an action, was then added to give 'cheater', a person who cheats. The spelling keeps the long 'ea' of 'cheat' intact, which is the main thing to remember rather than any 'ee'.

How the word is built

• cheat (to defraud, deceive)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)