cheater

noun

cheat·​er ˈchē-tər 

plural cheaters

1

: one who cheats: such as

a

: one who violates rules dishonestly

a cheater at cards

tax cheaters

That presumably includes pitchers who suspect they've given up home runs to players who cheat and batters who suspect they're being outhit by cheaters.

—Chris Jenkins

… if the tests use the same questions day after day for months, they are much more vulnerable to cheaters who can memorize the questions.

—Douglas Frantz

b

: one who is sexually unfaithful

Her boyfriend turned out to be a cheater and a liar.

Although Bartolomeo, 36, has written another tale of infidelity, the unfaithful here is our narrator, Diana Campanella. A woman. All the cheaters in this book are women—and none of the men are evil.

—Valerie Franke

2

cheaters plural, US slang : eyeglasses, spectacles

"Joe and I blow in there to see if there's anything for us, and there's a tall guy in tortoiseshell cheaters sitting in Ike's office."

—P. G. Wodehouse

especially, in current use : eyeglasses used for reading or close work

I needed my cheaters to read the menu.

Despite considerable research efforts into this condition [presbyopia], becoming increasingly prevalent as the population enjoys greater longevity, no simple treatment beyond bifocals or reading glasses ("cheaters") exists.

—Terrence P. O'Brien

Synonyms

• bilk
• bilker
• cheat
• chiseler
• chiseller
• confidence man
• cozener
• defrauder
• dodger
• fakir
• finagler
• fraudster [chiefly British]
• hoaxer
• scammer
• scamster
• shark
• sharper
• sharpie
• sharpy
• skinner
• swindler
• tricker
• trickster

Examples of cheater in a Sentence

gambling casinos have very elaborate means of detecting cheaters

Recent Examples on the Web

Their relatively simple radio attack would allow cheaters or vandals to spoof signals from as far as 30 feet away that trigger a target bike to unexpectedly shift gears or to jam its shifters and lock the bike into the wrong gear. —Andy Greenberg, WIRED, 14 Aug. 2024

It’s not lost on me that the two cheaters in the group are the ones who get killed. —Sophie Hanson, StyleCaster, 31 Oct. 2024

And then — and there is no nice way to put this — there are the cheaters. —Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 19 Oct. 2024

But the Kooks are cheaters, so JJ loses the race and all the remaining Poguelandia 2.0 money. —Maggie Fremont, Vulture, 11 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1606, in the meaning defined at sense 1