swindle

Back-formation from swindler, from German Schwindler, from German schwindeln, from Middle High German swindeln, swindelen, from Old High German swintilōn, frequentative of the verb swintan, from Proto-West Germanic *swindan (“to diminish”).

See also Modern German schwindeln, Danish svindel and svindle, Dutch zwindelen and zwendelen, Yiddish שווינדל (shvindl), Low German swinneln, Middle English swinden (“to languish, waste away”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈswɪnd(ə)l/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪndəl

swindle (third-person singular simple present swindles, present participle swindling, simple past and past participle swindled)

1. (transitive) To defraud.

   The two men swindled the company out of $160,000.

   • 1865, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.)‎^[1]:

     Such Nations cannot have a King to command them; can only have this or the other scandalous swindling Copper Captain, constitutional Gilt Mountebank, or other the like unsalutary entity by way of King; and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children in a frightful and tragical manner, little noticed in the Penny Newspapers and Periodical Literatures of this generation.

   • 2015 December 3, Tracy Alloway, “There's Been a Bezzle-Fueled Boom in Bonds”, in Markets‎^[2], Bloomberg News, retrieved 16 August 2021:

     That word is bezzle. It describes the period in which an embezzler has stolen a man's money but the victim does not yet realize he's been swindled.

2. (ambitransitive) To obtain (money or property) by fraudulent or deceitful methods.

   She swindled more than £200 out of me.

3. (chess) For a player in a losing position to play a clever move that provokes an error from the opponent, thus achieving a win or a draw.

• See also Thesaurus:deceive
• (to be swindled): be sold a pup (idiomatic, British, Australian)
• (to defraud): swizz (informal, mainly British)

• swindler

swindle (plural swindles)

1. An instance of swindling.
   • 1914, Julian Hawthorne, chapter 16, in The Subterranean Brotherhood:

     There were men there who had committed merciless robberies, cruel murders, heartless swindles, abominable depravities.

   • 1935, G. K. Chesterton, The Scandal of Father Brown:

     [T]he scandal was the pretty common one of a corrupt agreement between hotel proprietors and a salesman who took and gave secret commissions, so that his business had a monopoly of all the drink sold in the place. It wasn't even an open slavery like an ordinary tied house; it was a swindle at the expense of everybody the manager was supposed to serve.

2. Anything that is deceptively not what it appears to be.
3. (chess) An instance wherein a player in a losing position plays a clever move that provokes an error from the opponent, thus achieving a win or a draw.

• See also Thesaurus:deception
• scheme
• swizz (informal, mainly British)

• Windles, wildens, windles