CHEATING

cheating, "the fraudulently obtaining the property of another by any deceitful practice not amounting to felony, which practice is of such a nature that it directly affects, or may directly affect, the public at large" (stephen, _digest of criminal law_, chap. xl. §367). cheating is either a common law or statutory offence, and is punishable as a misdemeanour. an indictment for cheating at common law is of comparatively rare occurrence, and the statutory crime usually presents itself in the form of obtaining money by false pretences (q.v.). the word "cheat" is a variant of "_escheat_," i.e. the reversion of land to a lord of the fee through the failure of blood of the tenant. the shortened form "cheater" for "escheator" is found early in the legal sense, and _chetynge_ appears in the _promptorium parvulorum_, c. 1440, as the equivalent of _confiscatio_. in the 16th century "cheat" occurs in vocabularies of thieves and other slang, and in such works as the _use of dice-play_ (1532). it is frequent in thomas harman's _caveat_ or _warening for ... vagabones_ (1567), in the sense of "thing," with a descriptive word attached, e.g. _smeling chete_ = nose. in the tract _mihil mumchance, his discoverie of the art of cheating_, doubtfully attributed to robert greene (1560-1592), we find that gamesters call themselves _cheaters_, "borrowing the term from the lawyers." the sense development is obscure, but it would seem to be due to the extortionate or fraudulent demands made by legal "escheators."