scam
part of speech
noun (a scam, scams); verb (scam, scams, scammed, scamming)
meaning for a pupil
1) A scam is a dishonest trick to get money or personal information from people. tree →
2) To scam someone is to cheat them with such a trick. tree →
sense in the lessons
In online safety lessons: scams can be fake messages, prize wins, «free» game currency, emails pretending to be from a bank or a friend; never share passwords, codes or addresses, never click strange links, and always tell a trusted adult. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Phrases: online scam, phone scam, scammer, a scam message.
examples
- That email saying I won a phone is a scam. tree →
- Do not click the link; it might be a scam. tree →
- A scammer tried to trick Grandma on the phone. tree →
- Free game coins for your password? That is a scam. tree →
- He was scammed out of his pocket money. tree →
- Tell an adult if you think it is a scam. tree →
- Real companies never ask for your password. tree →
- If it seems too good to be true, it is probably a scam. tree →
note
Countable. Past: scammed (double m). A person who scams is a scammer. A scam is a kind of lie for money; being tricked by one is not your fault, but tell someone quickly.
In the corpora
- A text saying a parcel is held and asking for a small payment is a common scam to steal bank details.
- Famous faces are used in scams; a real giveaway never asks for your password.
- Giveaways asking for card details are scams, even if a famous face seems to promise them.
- Some fundraising scams use AI-made videos of animals or people that do not exist to get money from kind viewers.
- Automated phone calls, or robocalls, use recorded or AI voices; some are surveys and some are scams.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «scam» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.