What does "wheeler-dealer" mean?

A shrewd political or commercial schemer, especially one who is unscrupulous; a hustler; a shady operator.

What is a synonym for "wheeler-dealer"?

Common synonyms include: access, activist, bad influence, ball of fire, beaver, big time operator.

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Noun

1
A shrewd political or commercial schemer, especially one who is unscrupulous; a hustler; a shady operator. informal
"Seated at separate tables to underscore their differing levels of involvement with indicted savings and loan wheeler-dealer Charles Keating, the five were fighting to regain reputations earned in a lifetime of public service."

"Tom's a high-flying wheeler-dealer who often negotiates deals worth millions of dollars."

From wheel and deal, equivalent to wheel + -er + deal + -er.

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