Other forms: conning, cons, conned
To con is to cheat somebody by winning their trust first. Con him out of his savings, a con artist, conned into signing.
The trust is the mechanism, which is why it is short for confidence trick — the mark is persuaded to hand something over willingly. Con also means to study closely, and the pros and cons are the arguments for and against, from a different Latin phrase. Note con as prison slang for a convict.
1verbconTo cheat somebody by winning their trust first.
“The man conned my grandmother into giving him her bank details.”
con is a swindling.
Short for confidence trick or confidence man, from the nineteenth century. The pros and cons come from a separate Latin phrase.
Old English
cunnan
Middle English
connen
English, today
con
From Middle English connen, from Old English cunnan. Middle English connen, Old English cunnan (“to know, know how”), Proto-West Germanic kunnan (“recognize, know how”), Proto-Germanic kunnaną (“to know, know how”), Proto-Indo-European ǵneh₃- (“to know”) a doublet of can.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA