Dictionary

befraud en · VERB

Etymology

From be- + fraud.

Meanings

1. (nonstandard, rare, transitive) Synonym of defraud.
   • Her new experiences were to change her habits of consumption further and to make her more susceptible to the befrauding frills that she could now afford, but which would exploit her. 1934, Albert Ernest Croft, Conditioning Buyer Personality:
   • When grown up, once he went on a voyage in the company of his younger step-brother, who befrauded and deserted him twice over on a lonely island. 2000, T. R. S. Sharma, C. K. Seshdri, June Gaur, Ancient Indian Literature: Tamil and Kannada, page 875:
   • Then I believed I had learned to know the measure of earthly suffering; but all sufferings of the world are nothing compared to the sufferings of the befrauded German emigrants in North America. 1970, Missouri Historical Society, The Bulletin, volume 27, page 113:
   • Vitelleschi, an invaluable friend who had emerged so unexpectedly, had kept his promises to the letter, ruining that fearsome woman he had befrauded, along with his competitor Filson, had won Johanna for him, whose possession had become a point of pride. 1996, Emil Klauprecht, Steven Rowan, Cincinnati, Or, The Mysteries of the West:
   • Therefore, it is always possible for persons to enter into conflicts of nonmalicious wrong when they disagree over what factors are the rightful property they have recognized, to befraud one another by using the contractual form of reciprocal recognition to acquire property through misrepresentation, and finally to commit crimes by simply choosing to violate openly the property rights of others. 1991, Richard Dien Winfield, Freedom and Modernity, page 121:
   • You talk ceaselessly about the 'fraud of 'those who make a business out of anti-Semitism.' Who is befrauding? In what manner? 1987, Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism, page 104:

Forms

Synonyms

defraud