"snake oil salesman" meaning in English

See snake oil salesman in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: snake oil salesmen [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|snake oil salesmen}} snake oil salesman (plural snake oil salesmen)
  1. (term): A swindler or grifter who sells worthless or fraudulent remedies, cures, or solutions such as snake oil, often an aggressive or showy manner. Synonyms: confidence trickster, con artist Related terms: con artist (english: obtaining money and valuables through deception), grifter, huckster, mountebank (english: swindling money from others)
    Sense id: en-snake_oil_salesman-en-noun-E2t7XOQP Categories (other): English terms with collocations, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 55 45 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 54 46 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 52 48
  2. One who deceives people in order to obtain money from others: fraud, scammer, charlatan, huckster, conman.
    Sense id: en-snake_oil_salesman-en-noun-hPr8ESf2 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 55 45 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 54 46 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 52 48

Inflected forms

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    {
      "form": "snake oil salesmen",
      "tags": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "She was dubbed a \"modern day snake oil salesman\" after she managed to swindle over thousands of internet customers.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A swindler or grifter who sells worthless or fraudulent remedies, cures, or solutions such as snake oil, often an aggressive or showy manner."
      ],
      "id": "en-snake_oil_salesman-en-noun-E2t7XOQP",
      "links": [
        [
          "term",
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        [
          "swindler",
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        [
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        [
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        [
          "snake oil",
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          "aggressive",
          "aggressive#Adjective"
        ],
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(term): A swindler or grifter who sells worthless or fraudulent remedies, cures, or solutions such as snake oil, often an aggressive or showy manner."
      ],
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        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "english": "obtaining money and valuables through deception",
          "word": "con artist"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "word": "grifter"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "word": "huckster"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "english": "swindling money from others",
          "word": "mountebank"
        }
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        {
          "word": "confidence trickster"
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          "charlatan",
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        [
          "huckster",
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        ],
        [
          "conman",
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    }
  ],
  "word": "snake oil salesman"
}
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    "English lemmas",
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  "forms": [
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    {
      "english": "obtaining money and valuables through deception",
      "word": "con artist"
    },
    {
      "word": "grifter"
    },
    {
      "word": "huckster"
    },
    {
      "english": "swindling money from others",
      "word": "mountebank"
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  ],
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          "text": "She was dubbed a \"modern day snake oil salesman\" after she managed to swindle over thousands of internet customers.",
          "type": "example"
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      ],
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        "A swindler or grifter who sells worthless or fraudulent remedies, cures, or solutions such as snake oil, often an aggressive or showy manner."
      ],
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        },
        {
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        "One who deceives people in order to obtain money from others: fraud, scammer, charlatan, huckster, conman."
      ],
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        ],
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          "obtain",
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        ],
        [
          "scammer",
          "scammer"
        ],
        [
          "charlatan",
          "charlatan"
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          "huckster",
          "huckster"
        ],
        [
          "conman",
          "conman"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "snake oil salesman"
}

Download raw JSONL data for snake oil salesman meaning in English (1.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-02 using wiktextract (db0bec0 and 633533e). 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.