[cheet] 
| 1. | to defraud; swindle: He cheated her out of her inheritance. |
| 2. | to deceive; influence by fraud: He cheated us into believing him a hero. |
| 3. | to elude; deprive of something expected: He cheated the law by suicide. |
| 4. | to practice fraud or deceit: She cheats without regrets. |
| 5. | to violate rules or regulations: He cheats at cards. |
| 6. | to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers. |
| 7. | Informal. to be sexually unfaithful (often fol. by on): Her husband knew she had been cheating all along. He cheated on his wife. |
| 8. | a person who acts dishonestly, deceives, or defrauds: He is a cheat and a liar. |
| 9. | a fraud; swindle; deception: The game was a cheat. |
| 10. | Law. the fraudulent obtaining of another's property by a pretense or trick. |
| 11. | an impostor: The man who passed as an earl was a cheat. |
| cheat (chēt) v. cheat·ed, cheat·ing, cheats v. tr.
[Middle English cheten, to confiscate, short for acheten, variant of escheten, from eschete, escheat; see escheat.] cheat'er n. |
cheating
A number of high-profile instances involving plagiarism and resume padding that were reported in 2001 continued to capture headlines in 2002 and to bring increased scrutiny to the methodology of cheating. Though historian Doris Kearns Goodwin maintained that the cribbing in her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987) was unintentional, her reputation was severely damaged, and in June she resigned her post on the Pulitzer Prize board. Fellow historian Stephen Ambrose apologized in January for having failed to acknowledge his source material in at least six books. (See Obituaries.) After Piper (Kan.) High School teacher Christine Pelton accused some students of having taken material from the Internet for a botany project, gave them all failing grades in 2001, and had her decision overruled by the school board in December, she resigned in February 2002; other teachers were inspired to follow suit as well, and the handling of the incident sparked a national uproar. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis lost his credibility and was suspended in 2001 for one year from teaching at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass., after it became known that he had fabricated stories about military exploits in Vietnam and subsequent activity in the peace and civil rights movements. Football coach George O'Leary lost his dream job in 2002 at the University of Notre Dame a few days after signing his contract when "inaccuracies" sprang up in his resume.
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