Shlenter

adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fake, especially a fake diamond.
  2. 2
    A scam, ploy, fraud, trick.

    "I did a shlenter. I went up to the girl while she was opening the gate and asked her to leave it open."

  3. 3
    A scammer.
Verb
  1. 1
    To acquire in an underhanded way. rare, transitive
  2. 2
    To scam, fool, deceive, trick. rare, transitive

    "In the time I spend at Rhodes I will encounter many brilliant minds and come to understand principles, strategies and tactics, caucusing, shlentering, back-stabbing, manipulation, campaigning, alliances – and I will also witness the depths of human determination and depravity, and the utter Shakespearean nature of it all."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Fake, not genuine, counterfeit. not-comparable

    "There was a good deal of talk on the about about certain racing men last evening publicly taking "shlenter" wages …"

Example

More examples

"I did a shlenter. I went up to the girl while she was opening the gate and asked her to leave it open."

Etymology

From Afrikaans slenter (“ploy, scam, stroll, saunter”).

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