sharper

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

United States//ˈʃɑɹpɚ//

A swindler; a cheat; a professional gambler who makes his living by cheating.

adjective

1
Also a form of sharpcomparative form of sharp: more sharp

Etymology

From sharp + -er.

noun

1
datedA swindler; a cheat; a professional gambler who makes his living by cheating.
I could plainly diſcover from whence one Family derives a long Chin; why a ſecond hath abounded with Knaves for two Generations, and Fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be Sharpers.
Our young gentlemen who go to Rome will do well to be upon their guard against a set of sharpers, (some of them of our own country,) who deal in pictures and antiques, and very often impose upon the uninformed stranger, by selling him trash, as the productions of the most celebrated artists.
He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers …
1878, John Payne, Introduction, in François Villon, Poems, translated by John Payne, New York: Boni & Liveright, c. 1918, p. 33 https://archive.org/details/poemsvillon00vill […] in a twinkling the accomplished sharper changes the pitchers and pretending to examine the contents, asks the tapster what kind of wine he has given him […]

Forms

plural: sharpers

Sharp · A surname.Sharpe · A surname.sharpen · To make sharp.

sharper · A swindler; a cheat; a professional gambler who makes his living by cheating.

Sharper · A surname.sharply · In a sharp manner, in various senses. So as to terminate in a…shatter · To violently break something into pieces.

The neighbouring pages — Alphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.