Word.ws English Dictionary

pigeon drop

pigeon drop noun: a confidence trick in which the mark or "pigeon" is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money or more valuable object.

Noun

pigeon drop (plural pigeon drops)

  1. A confidence trick in which the mark or "pigeon" is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money or more valuable object.
    • “You some kind of confidence man or dope peddler or something? You trying to work one of those pigeon drops on me?”1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 330

Forms of pigeon drop

pluralpigeon drops

Questions about pigeon drop

What does pigeon drop mean?
Pigeon drop means a confidence trick in which the mark or "pigeon" is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money or more valuable object.
What part of speech is pigeon drop?
Pigeon drop is a noun.
What is the plural of pigeon drop?
The plural of pigeon drop is pigeon drops.

Words near pigeon drop in the dictionary

  1. pigeon chests
  2. pigeon clock
  3. pigeon clocks
  4. pigeon coop
  5. pigeon coops
  6. pigeon drop
  7. pigeon dropper
  8. pigeon droppers
  9. pigeon dropping
  10. pigeon droppings
  11. pigeon drops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pigeon drop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pigeon drop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pigeon_drop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.