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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

scam.

A fraudulent or dishonest deal. A swindle.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈskæm/Received-Pronunciation[ˈskæm]Received-Pronunciation/ˈskam/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales[ˈskam]British, Southern, Standard, Wales

  1. A fraudulent or dishonest deal. A swindle.

    That marketing scheme looks like a scam to me.
    a scam catches most people with any sense of compassion

  2. Something that is promoted using scams.

    That new diet burger is a scam.
Where this word comes from

US American carnival slang of uncertain origin. Possibly from scamp (“swindler, cheater”) or Irish cam (“crooked”). Also possibly from Danish skam; if so, it would be a doublet of shame and sham. First use appears c. 1963 in the periodical Time. The word became common use among the US drug culture when in early 1980, after Operation ABSCAM, an FBI sting operation directed at public officials, became public.

verb/ˈskæm/Received-Pronunciation[ˈskæm]Received-Pronunciation/ˈskam/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales[ˈskam]British, Southern, Standard, Wales

  1. To defraud or embezzle.

    ambitransitive
    They tried to scam her out of her savings.

  2. To seek out a partner for casual sex; to hit on.

    slang
Where this word comes from

US American carnival slang of uncertain origin. Possibly from scamp (“swindler, cheater”) or Irish cam (“crooked”). Also possibly from Danish skam; if so, it would be a doublet of shame and sham. First use appears c. 1963 in the periodical Time. The word became common use among the US drug culture when in early 1980, after Operation ABSCAM, an FBI sting operation directed at public officials, became public.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.