CHEATING  , " the fraudulently obtaining the

property of another by any deceitful practice not amounting to felony, which practice is of such a nature that it directly affects, or may directly affect, the public at large" (Stephen, Digest of Criminal Law, chap. xl . § 367) . Cheating is either a common law or statutory offence, and is punishable as a misdemeanour . An indictment for cheating at common law is of comparatively rare occurrence, and the statutory crime usually presents itself in the form of obtaining money by false pretences (q.v.) . The word " cheat " is a variant of " escheat," i.e. the reversion of land to a lord of the fee through the failure of blood of the tenant . The shortened form " cheater " for " escheator " is found early in the legal sense, and chetynge appears in the Promptorium Parvulorum, c . 1440, as the equivalent of confiscatio . In the 16th century " cheat " occurs in vocabularies of thieves and other slang, and in such works as the Use of Dice-Play (1532) . It is frequent in Thomas Harman's Caveat or Warening for . . . Vagabones (1567), in the sense of " thing," with a descriptive word attached, e.g. smeling chete = nose .