Fraud

How to spell fraud

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fraud

What does fraud mean?

1. nounThe crime of deceiving someone, especially to gain money or property dishonestly.
2. nounA person who deceives others by pretending to be something they are not.

Fraud in a sentence

• The bank flagged the transaction as possible fraud.

• The so-called doctor turned out to be a complete fraud.

• Investigators uncovered widespread tax fraud at the firm.

• Critics called the celebrity coach a fraud with no real qualifications.

Where does fraud come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin noun fraus, with the stem fraud-, which meant 'deceit', 'trickery', or even 'harm done by cheating'. Latin used it for the kind of wrong that hurts someone through dishonesty rather than open force. It passed into Old French as fraude, carrying the same idea of cheating, and English borrowed it in the late 1300s during the great wave of legal and commercial vocabulary that came in from French. From the start it sat comfortably in the language of courts and money, which is still where it lives most strongly today. The same Latin root survives in the adjective 'fraudulent' and in the slightly old-fashioned verb 'defraud', so the spelling stays steady across the family. The simple 'au' vowel, pronounced like 'aw', is the only mild trap, since some writers reach for an 'o'.

How the word is built

• fraud (from Latin fraus, fraudem: deceit, harm)
• no affix