Fraudulent

How to spell fraudulent

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fraudulent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fraudulent mean?

1. adjectiveInvolving or characterised by deliberate deception, typically for unlawful financial gain.

Fraudulent in a sentence

• The bank flagged several fraudulent transactions on her account.

• Investigators uncovered a fraudulent insurance claim worth thousands.

Where does fraudulent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin fraudulentus, meaning 'full of trickery' or 'cheating', which was built on fraus (stem fraud-), the noun for deceit, harm, or cheating. The Latin ending -ulentus carried the sense of 'full of' or 'abounding in', the same element seen in words like 'corpulent' (full of body) and 'opulent' (full of wealth). English took the word in through Old French fraudulent during the late Middle Ages, around the fifteenth century, and it has kept its core idea of deliberate deception for gain ever since. The base noun 'fraud' arrived along the same route from fraus, which is why the spellings stay so close. The trap for writers is the unstressed middle: the syllable sounds like a vague 'juh', yet it is spelled '-du-', and the ending is '-ulent', not the more familiar '-ulant'.

How the word is built

• fraud (deceit)
• -ulent (full of, adjective suffix)