Word.ws English Dictionary

short con

short con noun: a scam that can be performed in minutes or seconds, typically aiming to rob the victim of the money or valuables they carry on them.

Noun

short con (plural short cons)

  1. A scam that can be performed in minutes or seconds, typically aiming to rob the victim of the money or valuables they carry on them.
    • It's up to me. I'm strictly short con. It's nothing but small time stuff. I can walk away from it anytime I want.1990, Jim Thompson, Donald E. Westlake, The Grifters, spoken by Roy Dillon (John Cusack)
    • Another common form of short con is the shell game. This scam has the advantage of giving the criminal the ability to rip off many marks all at one location.2009, Michael Benson, Cons and Frauds, Infobase, →ISBN, page 21

Forms of short con

pluralshort cons

Questions about short con

What does short con mean?
Short con means a scam that can be performed in minutes or seconds, typically aiming to rob the victim of the money or valuables they carry on them.
What part of speech is short con?
Short con is a noun.
What is the plural of short con?
The plural of short con is short cons.

Words near short con in the dictionary

  1. short circuiting
  2. short circuits
  3. short code
  4. short codes
  5. short commons
  6. short con
  7. short cons
  8. short corner
  9. short corners
  10. short cross
  11. short crosses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: short con (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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