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shyster

[shahy-ster]

Origin

noun Informal.

a lawyer who uses unprofessional or questionable methods.

a person who gets along by petty, sharp practices.

Origin:
1835–45, Americanism; probably < German Scheisser, equivalent to scheiss(en) to shit + -er -er¹; final -ser conformed to -ster

Related forms

shy·ster·ism, noun

Can be confused: ambulance chaser, mouthpiece, pettifogger, shyster.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To shyster

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Shyster is always a great word to know.

So is doohickey. Does it mean:

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

shyster (ˈʃaɪstə)

—n
	informal chiefly (US) a person, esp a lawyer or politician, who uses discreditable or unethical methods

[C19: probably based on Scheuster, name of a disreputable 19th-century New York lawyer]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

shyster

"unscrupulous lawyer," 1843, U.S. slang, probably altered from Ger. Scheisser "incompetent worthless person," from Scheisse "shit," from O.H.G. skizzan "to defecate" (see shit).

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Slang Dictionary

shyster definition

[ˈʃɑɪstɚ]

n.
an unethical or unscrupulous lawyer. (Also a rude term of address.) : Look, you cheap shyster, I paid you to help me, not ruin me!

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Related Words

ambulance chaser

mouthpiece

Matching Quote

"At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools.... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife."

-H.L. Mencken

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