Grift

//ɡɹɪft// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A confidence game or swindle. US, slang

    "Hey, what's the grift? What are you trying to pull?"

Verb
  1. 1
    To obtain illegally, as by con game. US, slang, transitive
  2. 2
    To obtain money illegally. US, intransitive, slang
  3. 3
    To obtain money immorally or through deceitful means. US, intransitive, slang

Synonyms

All synonyms
artartificeblindbuncocheatchicanery

Example

More examples

"Hey, what's the grift? What are you trying to pull?"

Etymology

American criminal underworld slang, 1906 (noun), 1915 (verb), alteration of graft (“corruption, illicit profit through corrupt means, bribe, one's occupation”), alteration perhaps influenced by similar sounding words, e.g. drift, etc., probably ultimately from Middle Dutch graft (“digging, ditch, canal, trench”) (modern Dutch gracht), related to Dutch graven (“to dig”), English grave (“to dig”).

Related phrases

con gameconfidence game

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.