The word Grifter is derived from the act of fraudulence against another by gaining the trust of the person being duped. The Grifter definition is often referred to as a confidence trick which is then shortened to the word “con” which is in common use in the English language today. The act of the con artist is to deprive the “mark” of any item or items that might hold value for the person doing the grifting or conning. The mark is the individual who has been targeted to be robbed or deprived eventually through means of friendship or trust building activities amongst the two.
The Grifter definition came about as early as in the annum 1849 when William Thompson took his victims by surprise in the streets of England as he would randomly start talking to people he had no connection to until they started feeling comfortable with him and then he would dazzle them and ask them if they felt comfortable enough with him to show him (the words he used then were “to lend him”) their wristwatches and people back in the day were naive enough to fall for it, or perhaps they were so because they hadn’t ever thought that someone could possibly take advantage of the trust that people share with others.
Grifter definition can be broken down into a simple sentence that brings justice to the term which is: any person who will acquire the confidence of another just to derive some kind of personal gain through it by the end of his or her interaction with the other.
Grifter Definition
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