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Definition of "shill" [shill]

  • One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle. (noun)
  • To act as a shill. (verb-intransitive)
  • To act as a shill for (a deceitful enterprise). (verb-transitive)
  • To lure (a person) into a swindle. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "shill" in a sentence
  • "Post have so much more merit when they don't use the term shill or phrase: partisan hack."
  • "The idea that the White House might try to infiltrate the press corps with a shill is a chilling thought in this democracy, but this is the administration that has been caught paying “journalists” and generating its own prefabricated “news reports” to distribute to TV stations too naïve to recognize the attempt at propaganda."
  • "Watch Senator Al "Kick-Ass" Franken wipe up the floor with this health-care-lobby shill from the Hudson Institute who claimed that universal healthcare would increase medical bankruptcies."