Word.ws English Dictionary

spieler

/ˈspiːlə/

spieler noun: a swindler, a gambler.

Noun

spieler (plural spielers)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) A swindler, a gambler.
    • That a crowd of Sydney stealers,
      Jockeys, pugilists and spielers
      Brought some horses, real heelers,
      Came and put us through.1891, Banjo Paterson, An Evening in Dandaloo
    • ‘A spieler,’ Leah gently loosened the painful crab hold of the boy's hand. ‘[…] A trickster. A quandong. A ripperty man. A con-man.’1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 228
  2. A gambling club.
  3. A person who speaks fluently and glibly; a barker.
    • "Bosco! He eats 'em alive! Eats 'em alive!" Brissenden exclaimed, imitating the spieler of a locally famous snake-eater.1908 September – 1909 September, Jack London, chapter 31, in Martin Eden, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published September 1909, →OCLC
    • Two thousand men, women and children turned out for this giant excursion and danced and drank the day away while professional spielers extolled the virtues of the new metropolis and inveigled the unwary into investment.1961, Vincent F. Seyfried, The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part I
  4. (Canada, US, informal) A radio or television announcer.

Forms of spieler

pluralspielers
alternative formshpieler
alternative formspeiler

Origin of spieler

From German Spieler (“player, gambler”) or from spiel.

Questions about spieler

What does spieler mean?
Spieler means a swindler, a gambler.
What part of speech is spieler?
Spieler is a noun.
How do you pronounce spieler?
Spieler is pronounced /ˈspiːlə/ (UK).
What is the plural of spieler?
The plural of spieler is spielers.

Words near spieler in the dictionary

  1. Spielberg
  2. Spielbergesque
  3. Spielbergian
  4. Spielbergs
  5. spieled
  6. spieler
  7. spielers
  8. spielfreak
  9. spielfreaks
  10. spieling
  11. Spielman

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spieler (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-spieler.wav.

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