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swindle

/ˈswɪndl//ˈswɪndl/·verb, noun
to cheat someone out of money or property; such a cheat
Fig. 1 — The watch goes up to catch the light and the patter never stops: the purse crosses one way, the gold crosses the other.
01Definition

To swindle is to deceive someone out of what is theirs — money, savings, land — by winning trust and then abusing it. English borrowed the word from German in the 1770s: schwindeln, 'to be dizzy, to make dizzy claims', which is precisely the method — the victim's judgement is spun until the worthless looks golden. The verb keeps its own grammar, swindle someone OUT OF something, and doubles as a noun for the scheme itself: a stock swindle, an insurance swindle. The agent noun swindler arrived first and named the whole family.

02In use
  • iHe fabricated the quarterly returns, then swindled fresh investors to pay the old ones.
  • iiThe pair swindled elderly clients out of their life savings with promises of gold.
  • iiiHistorians still argue over who was swindled worse in the canal share swindle of the 1790s.
03Collocations
  • swindle someone out of
  • an insurance swindle
  • swindled investors
  • a massive swindle
  • swindled out of their savings

Family swindler (noun) · swindle (noun)

04Relations

=defraud, cheat, con, deceive, fleece

≠reimburse, deal honestly

06TOEFL & IELTS

Reading-passage vocabulary for financial history — canal manias, bubble companies, Ponzi schemes — where it labels the criminal end of speculation. The pattern to memorise is swindle A out of B: 'investors were swindled out of millions'. Register check against its neighbours: fraud is the broad legal term, scam the informal modern one (phishing, fake calls), swindle slightly old-fashioned and story-flavoured, at home wherever a con artist meets a victim face to face. In essays it adds colour; in legal contexts, write fraud.

07Asked
What does swindle mean?
To cheat a person or organisation out of money or property through deception — the swindler wins confidence first and collects afterwards. Unlike stealing, swindling needs the victim's willing participation: they hand the money over, believing the story. The word covers both the act ('he swindled the town') and, as a noun, the scheme itself ('the whole fund was a swindle').
Where does the word swindle come from?
From German schwindeln — 'to feel dizzy; to make giddy, extravagant claims' — borrowed into English in the 1770s. The metaphor inside is worth keeping: a swindler makes the victim's judgement swim until a lead brick passes for gold. German still uses Schwindel for both dizziness and a hoax, carrying the double sense English never took on.
What is the difference between swindle, scam and fraud?
Register and courtroom weight. Fraud is the formal, legal term — the one statutes and prosecutors use. Scam is its informal modern child, favoured for remote tricks: phishing scams, phone scams. Swindle sits between and slightly in the past: a con artist's face-to-face job, storied and old-fashioned. A court convicts you of fraud; the newspaper calls it a swindle; your cousin calls it a scam.
How do you use 'swindled out of' in a sentence?
The victim goes first, the loss follows 'out of': pensioners were swindled out of their savings; the club was swindled out of the transfer fee. The pattern mirrors cheat out of and trick out of, and it is the verb's most tested piece of grammar. Note the passive is the natural voice here — news English reports who lost before it knows who took.
Can swindle be a noun?
Yes — one swindle per scheme: a property swindle, an election swindle, 'the sale was a swindle from the start'. The noun is countable and slightly journalistic, and it usefully names the whole design rather than a single act. Where fraud as a noun sounds procedural, a swindle sounds like a story with characters — which is why headlines have always loved it.
What is a swindler?
The person who runs the swindle — recorded in English from 1774, before the verb itself, when the word arrived from German in London's financial world. A swindler differs from a thief in tooling: no force, no lockpicks, just a convincing manner and a worthless product. In the scene above the swindler works a folding suitcase stand, which is the entire job description: glitter, collect, vanish.