• Today's Word

Bilk

🔊 Listen to the word Bilk

bilk

Definition

(verb) To cheat or defraud someone of money or possessions; to obtain something by deceit or to evade payment.

Example

The contractor bilked dozens of elderly homeowners out of their savings before investigators finally caught up with him.

Word Origin

From 17th century English, though its precise origins remain disputed — which feels appropriate for a word meaning to cheat. It appears in cribbage terminology as early as the 1670s, where to “bilk” meant to spoil your opponent’s score. Some etymologists connect it to a dialectal variant of balk — to stop short or frustrate — while others suggest it developed independently in the criminal slang of Restoration-era London. By the 18th century it had fully settled into its modern meaning of fraud and evasion.

Fun Fact

The golden age of bilking as a professional practice was arguably 19th century America, when confidence schemes were so widespread that the term “confidence man” — later shortened to “con man” — entered the language. The original confidence man, William Thompson, operated in New York City in 1849 with almost comical simplicity: he would approach well-dressed strangers, chat them up, and then ask if they had enough confidence in him to lend him their watch — and simply walk away with it. His arrest made headlines and gave the English language one of its most enduring terms for a swindler.