wheeler-dealer
wheeler-dealer noun: a shrewd political or commercial schemer, especially one who is unscrupulous; a hustler; a shady operator.
Noun
wheeler-dealer (plural wheeler-dealers)
- A shrewd political or commercial schemer, especially one who is unscrupulous; a hustler; a shady operator.
- Seated at separate tables to underscore their differing levels of involvement with indicted savings and loan wheeler-dealer Charles Keating, the five were fighting to regain reputations earned in a lifetime of public service.1990 November 26, Ed Magnuson, Hays Gorey, “You Sold Your Office”, in Time
- It is illegal to buy and sell this sort of item, he says, but not necessarily illegal to buy and sell the containers that they happen to come in. What an unexpected wheeler dealer.2024 December 6, Stuart Heritage, “Meet the Rees-Moggs: a bluffer’s guide to the family’s weirdness”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Forms of wheeler-dealer
| plural | wheeler-dealers |
|---|---|
| alternative form | wheeler dealer |
| alternative form | wheelerdealer |
Origin of wheeler-dealer
From wheel and deal, equivalent to wheel + -er + deal + -er.
Questions about wheeler-dealer
- What does wheeler-dealer mean?
- Wheeler-dealer means a shrewd political or commercial schemer, especially one who is unscrupulous; a hustler; a shady operator.
- What part of speech is wheeler-dealer?
- Wheeler-dealer is a noun.
- What is the plural of wheeler-dealer?
- The plural of wheeler-dealer is wheeler-dealers.
Words near wheeler-dealer in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wheeler-dealer (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: “wheeler-dealer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wheeler-dealer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.