Noun: swindle
| Singular | swindle |
| Plural | swindles |
Sample Sentences
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There were men there who had committed merciless robberies, cruel murders, heartless swindles, abominable depravities. [1914, Julian Hawthorne, chapter 16, in The Subterranean Brotherhood:]
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[T]he scandal was the pretty common one of a corrupt agreement between hotel proprietors and a salesman who took and gave secret commissions, so that his business had a monopoly of all the drink sold in the place. It wasn't even an open slavery like an ordinary tied house; it was a swindle at the expense of everybody the manager was supposed to serve. [1935, G. K. Chesterton, The Scandal of Father Brown:]
Nouns inflected like swindle
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Back-formation from swindler, from German Schwindler, from German schwindeln, from Middle High German swindeln, swindelen, from Old High German swintilōn, frequentative of the verb swintan, from Proto-West Germanic *swindan (“to diminish”).
2. See also Modern German schwindeln, Danish svindel and svindle, Dutch zwindelen and zwendelen, Yiddish שווינדל (shvindl), Low German swinneln, Middle English swinden (“to languish, waste away”). See: German Nouns '
Schwindler', Danish Nouns '
svindel'.