Bait-and-switch
adj, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To exploit using bait and switch. transitive
"Perhaps the most baffling and frustrating feature of the mortgage mess is that, to my knowledge, the House Financial Services Committee never held public hearings in which bait-and-switched homeowners testified as to how their mortgage payments doubled in just a few years[…]"
- 1 Relating to use of bait and switch (offering one attractive exchange initially, but not honoring the offer) in business, politics, and elsewhere. not-comparable
"Despite Healy's argument that the Liberty Fund would go to worthwhile causes, many felt the Red Cross had deliberately misled donors by using September 11th in a bait-and-switch ploy."
Example
More examples"Despite Healy's argument that the Liberty Fund would go to worthwhile causes, many felt the Red Cross had deliberately misled donors by using September 11th in a bait-and-switch ploy."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.