grift
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 10, 2025 is:
grift • \GRIFT\ • verb
To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property.
// The email scammer shamelessly grifted thousands of dollars from unwitting victims.
Examples:
"When the families demanded he return the jewellery he had grifted from them he arranged meetings and then did not show." — Peter Spriggs, The Echo (South Essex, England), 31 Oct. 2025
Did you know?
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 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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the word of the day for December 10th. |
| 0:12.0 | Today's word is grift, spelled G-R-I-F-T. |
| 0:16.0 | Grift is a verb. To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property. |
| 0:23.9 | Here's the word used in a sentence from the echo by Peter Spriggs. |
| 0:28.6 | When the families demanded he returned the jewelry he had grifted from them, he arranged meetings and then did not show. |
| 0:37.2 | Someone who grifts is a thief, but of a particular sort. |
| 0:41.1 | They illegally obtain money or property by means of cleverness or deceit, and do not usually resort to physical force or violence. |
| 0:50.4 | A grifter might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, a scammer, or a con artist. |
| 0:56.4 | The most plausible etymology we have for the murky term is that the word grift is an early |
| 1:03.1 | 20th century alteration of graft, a slightly older word which refers to the acquisition of money |
| 1:09.7 | or property in dishonest or questionable ways. |
| 1:13.5 | Both grift and graft have noun and verb forms. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
| 1:22.9 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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