See Ponzi in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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],
"ref": "2023 July 20, David Shasha, “The Pride of Lakewood: Trumpscum Jew Sewer Rat Alan Dershowitz, Paid Friend of Ponzi Scheme Recidivist Eli Weinstein”, in Sephardic Heritage Update (Usenet):",
"text": "In late August 2022, Weinstein revealed his true identity to the Tryon owners in a secretly recorded meeting, Sellinger said. In another recorded August 2022 meeting, Weinstein admitted to embezzling Tryon investor money and making false statements about the alleged Optimus deals. Weinstein acknowledged that he was conducting a Ponzi scheme, stating, “I finagled, and Ponzied and lied to people to cover us,” Selinger said.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To introduce or perpetrate a Ponzi scheme style scam."
],
"links": [
[
"introduce",
"introduce"
],
[
"perpetrate",
"perpetrate"
],
[
"Ponzi scheme",
"Ponzi scheme"
],
[
"style",
"style"
],
[
"scam",
"scam"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal, intransitive, uncommon) To introduce or perpetrate a Ponzi scheme style scam."
],
"tags": [
"informal",
"intransitive",
"uncommon"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English informal terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English terms with uncommon senses",
"English transitive verbs"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
46,
53
]
],
"ref": "1999, Jack Heselov, Politics, Money & Shtick, page 24:",
"text": "About 6,000 California investors did—and got \"Ponzied\" out of their money.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
145,
152
]
],
"ref": "2020, William Ian Miller, Outrageous Fortune, Gloomy Reflections on Luck and Life, page 10:",
"text": "Never mind that the losers outnumber them and that their losses are greater than the winners' gains; the losers discover that in effect they got Ponzied.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To deceive someone by promising false investment returns that are funded by the proceeds of a new victim."
],
"links": [
[
"deceive",
"deceive"
],
[
"promising",
"promising"
],
[
"false",
"false"
],
[
"investment",
"investment"
],
[
"return",
"return"
],
[
"funded",
"funded"
],
[
"proceed",
"proceed"
],
[
"victim",
"victim"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal, transitive, uncommon) To deceive someone by promising false investment returns that are funded by the proceeds of a new victim."
],
"tags": [
"informal",
"transitive",
"uncommon"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈpɒnzi/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈpɑnzi/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"rhymes": "-ɒnzi"
}
],
"word": "Ponzi"
}
Download raw JSONL data for Ponzi meaning in English (10.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-05-01 using wiktextract (e973cf0 and ae80fde). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.