It's the word of the day for December 10th.
Today's word is grift, spelled G-R-I-F-T.
Grift is a verb.
To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Echo by Peter Spriggs.
When the families demanded he return the jewelry he had grifted from them,
he arranged meetings and then did not show.
Someone who grifts is a thief, but of a particular sort.
They illegally obtain money or property by means of cleverness or deceit,
and do not usually resort to physical force or violence.
A grifter might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, a scammer, or a con artist.
The most plausible etymology we have for the murky term is that the word grift is an early 20th century alteration of graft,
a slightly older word which refers to the acquisition of money or property in dishonest or questionable ways.
both grift and graft have noun and verb forms.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sarkobski.