cheat out of

English

Verb

cheat out of (third-person singular simple present cheats out of, present participle cheating out of, simple past and past participle cheated out of)

1. To trick (someone) into giving something up; to unfairly deprive someone of (something).
   • 1846, Robert Chambers, Cyclopedia of English Literature: A History, Critical and Biographcal, of British Authors, from the Earliest to the Present Times‎, volume 1:

     Terence introduces a flatterer talking to a coxcomb, whom he cheats out of a livelihood, and a third person on the stage makes on him this pleasant remark, 'This fellow has an art of making fools madmen.'

   • 1870, Mary Russell Mitford, The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Related in a Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends‎, volume 1:

     My dear Sir William, my Marmion has won the cup at Ilsley and been cheated out of it.

   • 1981 August 8, Maida Tilchen, Joan E. Biren, “Picturing Lesbians”, in Gay Community News, page 8:

     If we just define lesbian as the way white middle-class lesbian feminists have mostly turned out to be, like much of the activist community in recent years, then we are cheating ourselves out of having a larger family.

   • 2012, V. D. Carroll, Out of the Prison House‎, page 178:

     Relieved, he also felt cheated—cheated out of that final scene—that concluding memory that had promised such insight.