Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Swindle   /swˈɪndəl/   Listen
Swindle

noun
1.
The act of swindling by some fraudulent scheme.  Synonyms: cheat, rig.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Swindle" Quotes from Famous Books



... in a very few words, Major," he replied. "It is either a gigantic swindle or it is a clear case of murder. If a swindle, then Ulchester himself is at the bottom of it and it will end in murder just the same. Frankly, the swindle theory strikes me as being the more probable; in other words, that the whole thing is a put-up game between ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... sure you'd not have let her in! After ten years' service, and never a word but of kindness, and there you'd up and say, 'Be off, go along, get away with you!' Oh yes, you're a shrewd one at politics, I dare say! You don't need to be taught how to swindle the master, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... walked to and fro under the bright arcades, or stopped to gaze into the shop-windows. Here the merchant seldom closes his shop till the band goes home. Music arouses the romantic, and the romantic temperament is always easy to swindle, and the merchant of Venice will swindle ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... practical world of to-day. She liked him, she could not help liking him, and it irritated her exceedingly to think that men like Raish Pulcifer and Erastus Beebe should take advantage of his childlike qualities to swindle him, even if ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... a swindle!" repeated Pinky. "You're an old hard-fisted money-grubber, and no better than a robber. Three dollars and a quarter for all that work! It doesn't pay for the trouble. We ought to ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... Anything that can pay toll to the State may therefore go without further question. A tax has been paid on all the alcohol in these things. In many cases, also, a further tax has been paid for the government stamp on patent medicines. That the medicine may be dangerous, that it may be a cruel swindle, that it may take from consumptives and others money which is sorely needed for air and food, and give them in return what is worse than nothing—all these things are nothing to the State if ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... more of that sable kind of busy fellows, greasy, slick, and fat; and they are not cheated to death out of their hard earnings by villainous and infernal abolitionists, whose philanthropy is interest, and whose only desire is to swindle the slave-holder out of his own property, and convert its labor to their ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... wicked, scheming brain, and all his life he has longed for vengeance, but never seen his chance. During the last year or two things have gone against him—secret speculation, I think—and he finds himself in a bad way. He determines to swindle his creditors, and for this purpose he pays large cheques to a certain Mr. Cornelius, who is, I imagine, himself under another name. I have not traced these cheques yet, but I have no doubt that they were banked under that name at some provincial town where ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... dwell upon the impropriety of such conduct; but on my honor, as a member of the bar, the behavior of Portia was outrageous. This young female, not content with 'cavorting' around the country in a loose and perspicuous style, actually practises a gross swindle on the court. She assumes to be a man when she is only a woman, dons the breeches when she is only entitled to the skirts, and imposes herself upon the Duke of Venice as a learned young advocate from Rome, when in fact she is only a young ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... cloth and neat white linen of a well-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive, prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the most gigantic shams on record—a sham and swindle that was the prolific parent of a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honesty and credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, is all that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place—the Hall of the Kings at Karnak is ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... There's a fat fellow who's run half a mile, I'll bet. If his tongue hung out any farther, he'd trip up on it. But he'll do it again next time. They all do. Learning to stop running to fires is as hard as learning to stop buying mining-stock in the West. And it's just as big a swindle too. The returns from running to fires are marvelously small. They tell me that a hundred million dollars a year goes up in flames in this country. I don't believe it. If it does, I want to know who gets to see all the fun. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... safely, and considerably in advance of that old iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... been caught by one of the oldest tricks in the whole bunco list—the lost Spanish mine swindle. That acid, together with the rest of the outfit, means a gold-hunt as plain as if it were spelled out. And the Spanish professor was sent for, not to give lessons, but to translate the fake letter. Where ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... correspondence of a Hun Professor, full of an egregious self-sufficiency and humourlessness and greatly solicitous for the unhappy Alsatian who is ignorant and misguided enough to prefer the Welsch (i.e. foreign) "culture-swindle" to the glorious paternal Kultur of the German occupation. And HANSI illustrates his witty text with as witty and competent a pencil. HANSI has, in effect, the full status of an Ally all by himself. He adds out of the abundance of his heart a diary and novel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... had no alternative. Of course they took care to come for that before they talked of my resigning. I believe it was all planned beforehand. The whole thing seems to me to have been a swindle from beginning to end. By heaven, I'm almost inclined to think that the Duchess ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... no swindle can deceive you. I spend my life in getting facts. I now have seen enough to know that capitalism is not a swindle. If all hands labored hard and honestly the system would enrich us all. Some workers are dishonest and they gouge ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... practical joke. trick, cheat, wile, blind, feint, plant, bubble, fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c 791; ballot-box stuffing [U.S.], barney [Slang]; brace game [Slang], bunko game, drop game [Slang], gum game [U.S.], panel game [U.S.], shell game, thimblerig, skin game [U.S.]. snare, trap, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... been fraudulently conducted from the very beginning. John Sadleir thereupon killed himself; his brother James was expelled from the House of Commons, and he and several others implicated in the swindle fled the country and never reappeared, and so the "Brass Band" broke up, amid the well-deserved contempt of men of ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... the Cardinal's moral and mental tone, but it does not appear that he had any connection with the great final swindle. In his supernormal gifts and graces the Cardinal did steadfastly believe. Ten years earlier, Rohan had blessed Marie Antoinette on her entry into France, and had been ambassador at the Court of Maria Theresa, the Empress. A sportsman who once fired off 1,300 cartridges in a day (can this be true?), ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... the man who, occupying a position of trust, planned to swindle the Metropolis Trust Company through forged notes and checks," Rochester stated with slow emphasis. "Jimmie Turnbull learned that you, Clymer, were to visit Colonel McIntyre on Monday night, and he went there in disguise to find out if his ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... liberal offer made to him. He sets to work at once, sells a number of tickets, and forwards the proceeds to his principals in New York. The money is simply thrown away. No concert is ever held, no drawing is ever made. The scoundrels in charge of the swindle continue the sale as long as there is a demand for the tickets, and pocket all the receipts. When there is danger of interference by the police, they close their office and disappear. In a short while, they resume operations under ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Shannon, and is situated in Roscommon. At a low stage of water, ruins can be discerned at the bottom of the river, and are reported to be those of a city whose inhabitants injudiciously attempted to swindle the "good people" in a land bargain. The city was built, it seems, by permission of the fairies, the understanding being that all raths were to be left undisturbed. For a long time the agreement was respected, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... told I swindled before, and I ain't a-going to put up with it. You may ring your own trees, and watch your own fences, and the whole place may be burned for me. I ain't a-going to do another turn in Gangoil. Swindle, indeed!" So Boscobel shouldered his axe, and marched off through the forest, visible in the moonlight ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... firm trust she had in the skill and fidelity of the said Mr. M'Buffer; but if so her Majesty's trust would seem to have been somewhat misplaced, as Mr. M'Buffer, having been a managing director of a bankrupt swindle, from which he had contrived to pillage some thirty or forty thousand pounds, was now unable to show his face at Tillietudlem, or in the House of Commons; and in thus retreating from his membership had no object but to save himself from the expulsion which he feared. It was, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... the father, if not by the ruined possibilities of Dick Boyce himself. First, the desire to maintain a "position," to make play in society with a pretty wife, and, in the City, with a marketable reputation; then company-promoting of a more and more doubtful kind; and, finally, a swindle more energetic and less skilful than the rest, which bomb-like went to pieces in the face of the public, filling the air with noise, lamentations, and unsavoury odours. Nor was this all. A man has many warnings of ruin, and when things were going badly in the stock market, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the improvements on the ground amount to. There's some sort of a bungalow there, built by the shooting-club. Here's a description of the place, on the strength of which I bought it. You may take these papers along to judge the size of the swindle." ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... depicted in his accounts of them, as feats, successes, proofs of his acumen. He regards it as an almost magical exploit to operate a stock-brokerage shop, or to get elected to public office, or to swindle his fellow knaves in some degrading commercial enterprise, or to profess some nonsense or other in a college, or to write so platitudinous a book as this one. And in the same way he views it as a great testimony to his prowess at amour to ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... must remember that the professional politicians all stand in together when a financial swindle is being carried out. There is no "opposition" in these things. Since it is the very business of the Free Press to expose the falsehood or inanity of the Official Capitalist Press, one may truly say ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... manner—and to the prejudice of every other mercantile interest in the Colony. As a natural consequence it was cordially hated, and richly deserved the maledictions which generally accompanied the mention of the Friponne—the swindle—a rough and ready epithet which sufficiently indicated the feeling of the people whom it at once cheated ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... that you were attempting to dupe and swindle some one else," sarcastically retorted the diamond dealer. "The stones are a remarkably fine imitation, I am free to confess, and would easily deceive a casual observer; but if you have ever tried and succeeded in this clever game before, you are certainly ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... the swindle of bougies is the curse of the Continental traveller. None of us are particularly prudent, but we are all on the watch against small swindles, and of them all this is the most frequent and most insidious, the most constantly and ever recurrent. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... sat, worn out and disconsolate, gazing at a confusion of tents, sheds, and shanties, for it could be called nothing else, on the hither side of a tumbled together waste of snow and ice spreading to right and left. "Is it all a swindle or a dream?" ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... I fear," she replied. "I have written again and again, but have never received any answer to my letters. I'm afraid it was all a swindle." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... thousand dollars you got on that partnership swindle?" Burke asked, sneering. "I ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... first-class article on the market. Whether it was that there never had been a business, and that Harry's inspection of works, visits to show-rooms, and examination of books, was all part of an elaborate swindle carried out with the aid of some one who possessed these accessories; or whether it was that the whole thing was bought up cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never clearly known to Harry and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... It's a swindle to pay three cents for the Herald in such monotonous times. I was reduced to searching in your church paper to see if by any chance something new had ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... Riviera have altered. The climate, I find, does not suit me. Sun doesn't shine as much as I expected—not at night, for instance. Then the existence of an olive disease anywhere near is naturally very degoutant (as they say here). And the Casino at Monte Carlo is simply an organised swindle. It ought to be put down! After staking ten times in succession on "Zero," and doubling my stake each time, I was absolutely cleared out! Only just enough money to take me home. Shall follow your example, and try Torquay for the rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various

... after him; he has bolted. It's a long-firm swindle that he's been up to. You know what that means? Obtaining goods on false credit, and raising money on them. What's more, young Chadwick is arrested; he came before the magistrates yesterday, charged with being an accomplice. Here it is; read ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... beyond doubt much of what he had heard in the stuffy hotel room was true. It would not be Charles's way to incriminate himself so far unless driven to it by direst necessity. It was clear that he was alarmed for his personal safety. Fred did not doubt that Charles had attempted to swindle him; had in fact gone the full length of doing so. His simple, direct nature was awed by a confession that combined so many twists and turns, so many oblique lines and loops and circles. He sank into a creaky rocker, and rapped the arm idly with ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... A Mean Swindle. —Mistress: "Did you ask for milk bread?" Domestic: "Yes, mum." "What a miserable little loaf they gave you!" "Yes, mum. It's my opinion, mum, that that baker ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... and white, male and female. Mrs. Mott was chosen President, resolutions were reported, and when everything was in fine working order (except the furnace) Mr. Pomeroy slipped off to his senatorial duties, to watch the grand Kansas swindle now on the tapis, and to protect, if possible, the interests ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... times I find it difficult to believe I am not the victim of hallucination; nevertheless I know that either every canon, whether of criticism or honourable conduct, which I have learned to respect is an impudent swindle, suitable for the cloister only, and having no force or application in the outside world; or else that Mr. Darwin and his supporters are misleading the public to the full as much as the theologians ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... at once that the whole thing was a scandalous swindle, for Madame Binetti had told me that the Calori was very rich. I begged the attorney to leave me alone with the prisoner, as I wanted to have some ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... vinegar-tongued, vixenish virago, abused her neighbors to the wee, wiry, weird, widow woman, the Widow Wiggins' wonderful cat would mew. And so the vile, vixenish virago wished the cat was dead. And when slender, slim, slippery Sly Slick, Esq., tried to persuade the widow to swindle her neighbor, the cat mewed furiously. And so it came that Mr. Slick did not like the wee widow's wonderful cat. In fact, he said it was a nuisance. And Tilda Tattle, the tiresome-tongued, town tale-bearer, could ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... make further investigation. I went and had a good time of it down in the country, for the miners were very jolly fellows; but I was unable to satisfy my employers, and sent up a report which showed the public that the whole thing was a swindle, and so saved a good ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... was made to detain Paul. There could be no case against him. He went out of the hotel, and looked up and down Broadway in a state of indecision. He did not mean to sit down passively and submit to the swindle. But he had no idea in what direction to search ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... out Colonel Dartwell at this point. "So this is where you drifted to after the swindle ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill

... who had no illusions, and was in search of adventures; one of those women who frequently change their name, and who, as they have made up their minds to swindle if luck is not on their side, act a continual part, an adventuress, who could put on every accent; who for the sake of her course, transformed herself into a Slav, or into an American, or simply into a provincial; who was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... (as he knew well), and lived in simple villages, subsisting partly upon my work, and partly upon the little income left by my grandfather, Thomas Hoyle. But, compared with Hockin, we were well off; and he did his best to swindle us. Luckily all my faith in mankind was confined to the feminine gender, and not much even of that survived. In a very little time I saw that people may repudiate law as well from being below as ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... that she complained, and told of this abominable swindle; Derues had been beforehand with her, and the slander he had disseminated bore its fruits. It was said that his old mistress was endeavouring by an odious falsehood to destroy the reputation of a man who had refused to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... 't the ring 's you slide up to close the whisks for killin' flies won't stay up, 'n the flies don't get killed but jus' get hit so they buzz without stoppin' from then on. Mrs. Jilkins says right out 's she considers the whole thing a swindle, 'n' 'f Mr. Kimball was n't rentin' his store o' her brother she sh'd tell him so to his face. She says the three-inch measure on the handle 's too short to be o' any real service on a farm, 'n' her opinion is 't Mr. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... which employ more or less skilled labor. With crops which are perishable or bulky, "processing" must be performed locally. Thus canneries are located where the vegetables or fruits are grown. Although the selling of equipment for cooperative canning plants has been almost as much of a swindle as promoting cooperative creameries, yet large numbers of cooperative creameries exist where conditions for them are suitable, and there seems no inherent reason why cooperative canneries cannot be made successful when farmers have learned how to organize and to employ expert ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... to administer justice to the scoundrel who has deluded thousands into buying worthless mining shares or some such swindling bait, the victims are told that the whole swindle has been legitimized by the great seal of the state, and that their loss is the profits of a business conducted ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... those norms do not secure for us. That science of economy which is called political teaches us the most adequate, the most economical way of satisfying our needs, whether these needs are rational or irrational, beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral—a business economically good may be a swindle, something that in the long run kills the soul—and the supreme human need is the need of not dying, the need of enjoying for ever the plenitude of our own individual limitation. And if the Catholic eucharistic doctrine teaches that the substance of the body of Jesus Christ ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... a waste of holy water When we're taken to the font: They that make us pay for burial Swindle ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... ten times worse than the one we are fighting against, and every one of us was a fool for ever putting on a gray jacket. Why didn't they tell us all this in the first place, so that we might know what there was before us? It's a fraud and a cheat and a swindle and a—and a—what are you about?" he added, turning almost fiercely upon his captain, who elbowed his way through the excited group and tried to take the paper from his hand. "I'll not obey the orders of the Richmond government, and that's ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... leaned forward and began the story he had rehearsed. It was a new version of an old swindle and to every self-respecting confidence man was well known as the "sick engineer" game. The plot is very simple. The sick engineer is supposed to be a mining engineer who, as an expert, has examined a gold mine and reported against it. For his services the company ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... but also no good for plantation work, except as an overseer. The third is a poor artisan, an excellent clerk, or subordinate official, but so unreliable in the matter of honesty as to be nearly reliable to swindle any employer. Lagos turns out a large quantity of educated natives, but owing to the growing prosperity of the colony, these are nearly all engaged ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... you and Christie,—our only fight is with 'Black Bart' Hawley. Stop being a bullet-headed old fool, Fairbain, and understand this thing. Lie still, I tell you, and hear me out! Hawley is a liar, a thief, and a swindler. There is a swindle in this thing somewhere, and he hopes to pull out a big sum of money from it. He is merely using Christie to pull his own chestnuts out of the fire. She is innocent; we realize that, but this fellow is going to ruin ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... you; I merely act as you think. Or have I at any time pressed my finger on your throat in order to bring to me your most precious soul, for which I have a fancy? Have I, on account of my bartered purse, let a servant loose on you? Have I sought to swindle you out of it?" I had nothing to oppose to this, and he proceeded: "Very good, sir! very good! You cannot endure me; I know that very well, and am by no means angry with you for it. We must part, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... garden. You preach water and guzzle wine. You have entered into a conspiracy with the grafters of the town. You are in collusion with the people down at the Prudentia, and you are filling your own coffers in this gigantic swindle. From morning to night you enrich yourself with the hard-earned pennies of the poor. That is sharp practice, Jason Philip Schimmelweis, sharp practice, we say. Now you have got to sever all connection with the Prudentia, or the Party ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... gladly swindle me out of my eyes, if he could do so without being caught; but if he can't swindle me, he will be glad to do business with me 'on the square,' ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... the various capitalists in the "Yazoo Claims" was $1,500,000. [Footnote: Senate Documents, Eighteenth Congress, Second Session, 1824-25, Vol. ii, Doc. No. 14, and Senate Documents, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836-37, Vol. ii, No. 212. After the grants were secured, the companies attempted to swindle the State of Georgia by making payments in depreciated currency. Georgia refused to accept it. When the grant was rescinded, both houses of the Georgia Legislature marched in solemn state to the Capitol front ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... aix of Providence. Don't you think now that he'll git anything worse than his righteous desarvings. He's a fellow that's got no more of a saving soul in him than my whip-handle, and ain't half so much to be counted on in a fight. He's jest now nothing but a cheat and a swindle from head to foot; hain't got anything but cheat in him—hain't got room for any principle—-not enough either to git drunk with a friend, or have it out, in a fair fight, with his enemy. I shouldn't myself wish to see the fellow's throat cut, but I ain't slow to say that I shall go for ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... the legislature, said, that "any attempt at reformation of the present system is an absurdity, a swindle and a fraud. It is a damnable outrage. The lessee contract would not stand fifteen minutes before a petit jury. I could hang any of the lessees before a petit jury in two and a ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... right, and that the cheque will be duly placed on the credit side of the drawer's account in the heavenly books, however it may be foolishly spent or fraudulently appropriated by the payee on earth. Half a dozen of the fashionable charities are rotten, but we have not had a thorough-going swindle up to this time. We have been waiting for it ... in Lombard Street. It ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... the last century, and an eminent man too, who used to say, that whereas people in general pretended to admire astronomy as being essentially sublime, he for his part looked upon all that sort of thing as a swindle; and, on the contrary, he regarded the solar system as decidedly vulgar; because the planets were all of them so infernally punctual, they kept time with such horrible precision, that they forced him, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows. That's what this is. Nobody anywhere. I despise it. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... swindle!" burst in Matt Lincoln indignantly. "Don't you pay a cent. Miss Bartlett. It was not your fault, and he cannot force ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... young girl, and only a year before her father's death, and when she was sixteen years old, Miss Pinkerton majestically and with a little speech made her a present of a doll, which was, by the way, the confiscated property of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the father and daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the evening party, and how Miss Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the caricature ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... showed that Mme Lacoste's handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure being well within her income. This witness also proved that the Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been dictated from spite. Fourcade had been found out in what looked like a swindle over money which he ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... a very successful circus. Everyone enjoyed it and wished to see it again—everyone but the Maloneys. They said it was a swindle, and ran Dad down because he did n't divide with Paddy the 3s. 6d. he took ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... corrupt man who induced his corrupt brother to use his influence with the corrupt Samuel to get a corrupt contract entered into. The opening attack under this head has already been quoted. Later attacks did not diminish in violence: "the swindle or rather theft—impudent and barefaced as it is": "when Samuel was caught with his hand in the till (or Isaacs if you prefer to put ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... all the barriers of the old morality of the old slave-man, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God stands, the place is holy. Where I stand will be at once the foremost place ... 'all things are lawful' and that's the end of it! That's all very charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that's our modern Russian all over. He can't bring himself to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... he was dashed if he wanted to. He said he had had enough of life; it was a rotten swindle from beginning ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... wor summat extra; an summat at wod ha made thee oppen thi e'en. Aw wor nivver so surprised i' mi life. Swindle an his wife wor thear,—an tho' it isn't oft aw tak noatice o' fowk, aw couldn't help dooin soa, an it wor a ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... me that the mine was just as described, only a nasty road would have to be built to it that would probably cost L80,000 or L100,000, and the mill would have to be built. It looks to me like a total loss, Jim; but the swindle is so manifest that I believe we can make the conspirators disgorge at least the last half ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... the aroma of antiquity? A little shade darker in iniquity is the selling of stones entirely recut from broken larger ones, so that, though the stone remains identical, the workman puts a new face on it; and even this the antiquary will sell you as a veritable antique. Then there is the unmitigated swindle of the pure imitation, oftentimes so perfect that the most experienced judges are deceived. There is in fact no absolute certainty in the matter. There are antiques of which no doubt can be entertained, with characteristics utterly inimitable; but there are others as certainly antique ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... Maitland's expression was blank for a moment; then comprehension informed his eyes. "Oh, yes; in connection with the Dougherty investment swindle." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... his design. And, on the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Carrick, whose daughter has the divil's bargain in you; and for the like of that you're not bad matched. Tell him from me, Larry Macdermot—tell him from me, that I'm not so owld yet, nor so poor, nor so silly, that he can swindle me out of my lands and house that way. So clever as you think yourself, Mr. Keegan, you may walk back to Carrick again, and don't think to call yourself masther of Ballycloran ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... swindle, he had to outvie every lie by a new and bigger one. Mr. Douglas might be as patient as he liked; the abuse which was made of his name at last became too ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... but I shall wait till I find a husband who's charming enough and bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me and spend my money on other women—that's the sort of man for me. Mr. Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... Since I came a cropper over that accursed cotton swindle I've not had any inclination to meet any one I knew—especially any one in the Service, but"—and his voice rang honestly, "I always wondered whether you and I would ever ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... in that final disintegration of his great soul was the interest he took in the atrocious frauds of spiritualism. He was even duped into believing in the cheap swindle of table-tipping. The bliss of Robert Browning's home was broken up in this same form, of all-encompassing credulity, only it was Mrs. Browning who was the spiritualist in this case and resisted ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... the landlord, "the boy is at breakfast. I think he is all right, but I don't know. The professor, I fear, is a swindle." ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... the swale; and listening to the swindle of the flail, as it sounds dub-a-dub on the corn, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... again back at Penicuik. Perhaps his fervour about his subject had a little cooled, or the incessant discussions in regard to it had disturbed his faith. In fact the Ossian swindle was getting to be, in common phrase, a little blown upon. His health was failing him; his mode of life had never been very careful. He fell ill; he neglected himself. He worked on steadily, but with ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... my wife, or servant Saurea—do your best, swindle us, rook us, I promise you your interests won't suffer, if ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... double-dyed villain!" screamed Mr. Gladman, suddenly changing his tone. "You think the law is going to allow you to swindle honest men! You think we are going to sit still for you to rob us! That will—" Mr. Gladman pointed a lank forefinger dramatically towards ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... with the things that gall us most. What is it that rises up against us at odd times and smites us in the face again and again for years after it has happened? That we spent all the best years of our life in learning what we have found to be a swindle, and to have been known to be a swindle by those who took money for misleading us? That those on whom we most leaned most betrayed us? That we have only come to feel our strength when there is little strength left of any kind to feel? These things ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... and me got together and began to make medicine—how to get up some lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet way so as not to excite the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the larger corporations. We had close upon $500 between us, and we pined to make it grow, as all respectable ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... is the love of 'smart' dealing: which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter; though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... principals, from moneys which they had received for stock. Mr. Belcher had absorbed half that had been received, at no cost to himself whatever, and had added the grand total to his already bulky fortune. It was undoubtedly a gross swindle, and was, from the first, intended to be such; but it was under the forms of law, and it was doubtful whether a penny ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... brother, how the Germans in our shops swindle the gentlemen. Even if we're not Germans, but orthodox Christians, we, too, like to eat stuffed pasties. Ain't that ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... real Aladdin bargain. The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was fair with a peddler,—and I own I was glad the things were well out of Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... and a can opener | |convinced Andrew Sherrer last Saturday | |that he had been fleeced out of $500 by | |two clever manipulators of an ancient | |"get-something-for-nothing" swindle. So | |strong was the victim's ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... We are daily consulted by persons suffering from spermatorrhea and impotency who have been victimized by ignorant charlatans. Some seek to dupe and swindle the unwary by claiming to have themselves been cured of spermatorrhea or impotency by some prescription, which they offer to send free to any sufferer. When the prescription is obtained it is found to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... brought the rascally Crabtree to terms. Then the lads became the possessors of a biplane, and took several thrilling trips through the air. About this time, Mr. Anderson Rover, who was not in the best of health, was having much trouble with some brokers, who were trying to swindle him out of valuable property. He went to New York City, and disappeared, and his three sons went at once on the hunt for him. The brokers were Pelter, Japson & Company, and it was not long before Dick ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield

... people, you found that those who mingle in such matters often get left in the lurch. You need not say much more than that. You might do anything here without your friends troubling much about it provided it had nothing to do with politics. Rob a bank, perpetrate a big swindle, run away with a court heiress, and as long as the police don't lay hands on you nobody else will trouble their heads about the affair; but if you are suspected of being mixed up in the most remote ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... CHILTERN. Yes. But the Suez Canal was a very great and splendid undertaking. It gave us our direct route to India. It had imperial value. It was necessary that we should have control. This Argentine scheme is a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle. ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde

... scornfully pitied Rose Euclid! He blamed her for not having accomplished the miracle of eternal youth. He actually considered that she had cheated him. "Is this all? What a swindle!" he thought, as he was piecing together the shivered fragments of his ideas into a new pattern. He had felt much the same as a boy, at Bursley Annual Wakes once, on entering a booth which promised horrors and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... of thousands. But nevertheless it was their story. There was only one grain of consolation. It was in the last paragraph of the news item, and read: "There seems to be no trace of the man and woman who worked this clever swindle. As if by a telepathic message they have vanished at just the time when their whole ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... And those help wanted advertisements were simply appeals for more girls of that sort—for cheaper girls; or they were inserted by employment agencies, masquerading in the newspaper as employers and lying in wait to swindle working girls by getting a fee in exchange for a false promise of good work at high wages; or they were the nets flung out by crafty employers who speeded and starved their slaves, and wished to recruit fresh relays to replace those that had quit ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... cause the wrongdoer nominally upholds. In point of danger to the Nation there is nothing to choose between on the one hand the corruptionist, the bribe-giver, the bribe-taker, the man who employs his great talent to swindle his fellow-citizens on a large scale, and, on the other hand, the preacher of class hatred, the man who, whether from ignorance or from willingness to sacrifice his country to his ambition, persuades well-meaning but wrong-headed men to try to destroy the instruments upon which our prosperity mainly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... the twig's inclined, the tree is bent,'" Bristles told them, ponderously, "and we all can guess what'll become of Buck Lemington some day. He'll either make a striking figure in finance, or else head some big swindle that'll send him ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... "It was a swindle Josephine not turning up," Sarah continued, as she stretched herself out in Wingate's easy-chair. "Domestic ructions again, I suppose. How I do hate that ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Renshaw's shoulders, "I bought this yer ship five years ago jist ez she stood for 8,000 dollars. Kalkilatin' wot she cost me in repairs and taxes, and wot she brought me in since then, accordin' to my figgerin', I don't call a clear profit of 15,000 dollars much of a swindle." ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... choking laugh. "Life is a big, big swindle," she said. "The only happy people in the world are those who haven't found it out. But you—you say there are other things in life besides suffering. How did you know that if—if you've ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... a matter of degree. A man will always say if questioned about some small deficiency, "Do you think I would swindle you for a matter of two dollars?" or "Do you think I would risk my credit with the Company for the sake of one calf?" To be honest in a case where a larger profit is involved is a height of integrity to which ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... watch was a midday watch, and I think it was nearly three hours. The two sisters divided the remaining seventeen hours of the twenty-four hours between them, and each of them tried generously and persistently to swindle the other out of a part of her watch. I went to bed early every night, and tried to get sleep enough by midnight to fit me for my work, but it was always a failure. I went on watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy, and wretched, straight along through the four hours. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... who had sold the land to Ole Bull had no claim to it whatever, and had perpetrated a barefaced swindle, and now, having the money, he dared his victim to do his worst. The actual owner of the land, who had come forward to assert his rights, became interested in the scheme, and was willing to sell the land at a low price, but Ole now had no money. He instituted legal proceedings against the swindler, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... card, his visitor was forming in his mind a plan of procedure. He had come there with a carefully concocted lie on his tongue to swindle the sharpest lawyer in Scranton out of enough money to ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... after detailing the extent and the nature of the loss, and the steps which he had decided upon taking, went on to explain the circumstances as best he could. He had made some inquiry, and felt no doubt that a gigantic swindle had been perpetrated by Major Tifto and others. The swindle had been successful. Mr. Moreton had consulted certain gentlemen of high character versed in affairs of the turf. He mentioned Mr. Lupton among others,—and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... uncertain strides, or in the high-featured, mild-eyed face: neither was there anything mean in his wrath. It was all directed against himself. His Swedish blood had infused a gentle laziness into his temper, and he had forgiven Laidley long ago for his lifelong swindle, as no American with English ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... at any rate, though it seems rather a swindle to commandeer your particular, pet treasure. I'll have to borrow it now, I'm afraid; but I'll get you another some time, I ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... said Hart. "I think I can get mine. This is the most almighty abandoned swindle I ever met in all my born days." The whole meeting, except Mr. Tyrrwhit, received this assertion with loudly expressed applause. "Such a blackguard, dirty, thieving job never was up before in my time. I don't know 'ow to talk of it in language as a man isn't ashamed to commit ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... mob was pouring out of a side street, where they had just smashed the windows of the offices of a socialist newspaper, which had supplemented the Argentine dispatch with spiteful comments under the headlines: "Another Patriotic Swindle." ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... be needless to recount all the varied incidents of the next five days which were wasted here, by the thousand and one stories which the Abban produced to fritter away my time near his home, and swindle me out of my property. The time had now arrived when by appointment I should have been at Berbera; and as I was not then aware at what time the fair usually broke up, I felt much afraid of being too late to join my companions. Sometimes Sumunter raised my hopes ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... fly from Perugia, where he resided: and after a series of strange and not very creditable adventures, he arrived in England. Here he declared himself a Protestant; but, after some years, wishing to swindle the English Jesuits out of an annuity, be again returned to their order. Having got all he could from them, he again returned to Protestantism, and wrote his "History of the Popes," which was his principal literary work.-D. (Gibbon, speaking of Bower, in his Extraits (le mon Journal for 1764, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... were going to give two hundred thousand francs as a dowry to your daughter, and you had debts to the amount of three hundred and fifty thousand! Between ourselves it looks like you who had been trying to swindle the son-in-law, sir— ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac

... remember how he backed up Slugger Brown's father on Snowshoe Island," added Randy. "He was perfectly willing to swindle old Barney Stevenson out of his ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... what a complication, and what further enigmas to be solved! If Witt should lose, the national funeral of Priam Farll had been a fraudulent farce. A common valet lay under the hallowed stones of the Abbey, and Europe had mourned in vain! If Witt should lose, a gigantic and unprecedented swindle had been practised upon the nation. Then the question ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... at the Bohr. There he had made arrangements with his people that the ivory from Latooka station, 100 miles east of Gondokoro, should avoid my head-quarters, and be conveyed by an oblique course to the Bohr. By this swindle, the government would be cheated out of the share of two-fifths of the ivory which belonged to them by contract with Agad ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... as rectories generally contrive to do. No place in Flamborough parish could hope to swindle the wind of its vested right, or to embezzle much treasure of the sun, but the parsonage made a good effort to do both, and sometimes for three days together got the credit of succeeding. And the dwellers therein, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... seems to share with party scribes and Colonial politicians. If she had any classic leanings, which she has not, her favourite deity would be Mercury, the "winking Cyllenian Argophont" of the Homeric Hymn, the "little cradled rogue," the Apollo-cheating babe, "the lord of those who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal and shop-lift," under whom Autolycus prided himself upon having been "littered." Autolycus's complacent self-gratulation, "How bless'd are we that are not simple men!" would appeal to the heart of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various

... you want," I said, "in small sums from a number of people, you'll be able to keep control of the thing yourself, and you needn't be afraid of Ascher. Not that I believe Ascher would swindle, you. I think Ascher's ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... impostor palmed upon you, that there has been a plot and conspiracy to rob you, and that I have a mother who not only did this, but who could propose to me to go on deceiving you, and even to join in a fresh fraud and to swindle Rupert, is so awful that there is nothing for me to do but to ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... satisfied. When they all arrive again at the little Midshipman, and sit down to breakfast, nobody can touch a morsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being voracious about toast, but gives it up as a swindle. Mr Toots says, after breakfast, he will come back in the evening; and goes wandering about the town all day, with a vague sensation upon him as if he hadn't been to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... collision, and although the Englishmen might have fought, there was nothing to gain by a fight. Everything depended on swiftness of action, and Hindhaugh determined grimly that if rapidity could do anything he would teach the "furriners" a lesson for trying to swindle him. ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... what they are going to miss. Tom, for example, would never have put buttons in the offering. Doug would not gamble and drink. Poor, painted Nanon would starve rather than sin. Old man Jones, in the amen corner, would not swindle his neighbor; nor would Wetmore, the Baptist, practise the holy calling of shepherd, having in his breast the heart of a wolf. We all, saving a woman here and there, have our sins, little and great, and many times ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... that habit on Earth. Only they carry it further there—swindle their brothers, deceive their parents, oppress the weak, extort from the poor; work, toil, plot, cheat, rob, yes, even kill! in order to lay up a store of something they can never take away with them, and which renders them unhappy oftener than happy while ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... been too stunned by the discovery that he had been made an innocent party to the swindle even to think, but as he gradually recovered from the unpleasant surprise, his one thought was to get away from Simpkins, to deliver his groceries and get back to the store as quickly as possible. In order ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... seemed much interested in the convict's behaviour to the daughter of the man he had tried to swindle out of money. On the contrary, they jumped to the conclusion that his wife was morally his accomplice; and, indeed, if it had not been for her great beauty she would very likely have gone to the galleys too. There was, however, this difference ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... rings, the whistle sounds, and we are off to repeat the process and the picture, six or eight leagues further on. Take our advice and don't attempt to make a meal at one of these stations. The viands are wretchedly poor, and the price charged is a swindle. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou



Words linked to "Swindle" :   rip off, holdout, short, fraud, cozenage, thimblerig, bunko game, bunko, swiz, hustle, confidence game, shell game, sting, flimflam, cheat, chisel, bunco game, confidence trick, con game, pyramiding



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org