Con

How to spell con

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce con

What does con mean?

1. verbTo deceive someone in order to cheat them out of money or trust.
2. nounA trick or fraud designed to cheat people out of money.
3. nounA disadvantage or argument against something, usually paired with 'pro'.
4. nounAn informal term for a convicted prisoner.

Con in a sentence

• verb

  The caller tried to con her into sharing her bank details.

• noun

  The whole investment turned out to be an elaborate con.

• noun

  She listed every pro and con before accepting the job offer.

• noun

  The documentary followed an ex-con trying to rebuild his life.

• verb

  Fraudsters often con elderly homeowners with fake repair quotes.

• noun

  Police warned residents about a doorstep con targeting pensioners.

Where does con come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The little word 'con' is really several different words wearing the same three letters. The 'swindle' sense is a clipping of 'confidence', recorded in American English from around the 1880s, where a 'confidence man' won a victim's trust before cheating him; the trick was a 'confidence trick', soon shortened to 'con'. The 'pros and cons' sense comes from the Latin phrase pro et contra, meaning 'for and against', where contra literally meant 'against' or 'opposite'; English scholars abbreviated contra to 'con' centuries ago. The 'prisoner' sense is simply a shortening of 'convict', from the Latin convincere 'to overcome, to prove guilty'. Because all of these collapsed into the same tidy spelling, 'con' is one of those rare words whose meaning depends entirely on context rather than on any tricky letters. The spelling itself never causes trouble; the interest lies in how many separate stories share it.

How the word is built

• con (a short word with several unrelated origins; as a swindle it is a clipping of 'confidence', as in confidence trick; as a drawback it is from Latin contra 'against')