Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.
- v. To act as a shill.
- v. To act as a shill for (a deceitful enterprise).
- v. To lure (a person) into a swindle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Wiktionary
- n. A person paid to endorse a product favourably, while pretending to be impartial.
- n. An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game.
- v. To promote or endorse in return for payment, especially dishonestly.
- v. To put under cover; to sheal.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To shell.
- v. To put under cover; to sheal.
WordNet 3.0
- v. act as a shill
- n. a decoy who acts as an enthusiastic customer in order to stimulate the participation of others
Etymologies
- Perhaps short for shillaber.
Examples
“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.”
“Don't take offense to that comment, I have just always wanted to use the word shill in a sentance.”
“His current mission, as ranking shill, is to 3-card-Monty the herd.”
“I used the word shill in reference to the checkered career of S.”
“This kind of leadership is dangerous and has one and only one description - facism Report Abuse Darryl "BOOM BOOM" Issa is a long term shill for corporate interests.”
“The definition of the word shill is someone being paid.”
“I used the word shill as a hat tip to said Mr Singer’s habit of taking money from the industries he is paid to cover for.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shill’.
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Unsavory characters
absconder, aretaloger, arriviste, avaunter, bamboozler, bandit, banger, barbarian, barmecide, barrator, beldam, blatherskite and 190 more...
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Americanism
American words
finest, fast food, acclimate, aluminum, alphabetize, airplane, affirmative action, arugula, backhoe, bangs, base board, bayou and 162 more...
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shells
testudinals
testudines, turtle, testudine, testudo, tortoise, scallop, triton, calipash, daphnia, carapace, gryphite, phragmacone and 62 more...
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Words that have gone out of fashion
words are fashionable -wane and wax - in usage. This is an open list of those words now out of fashion.
marconigram, flapper, bully, glockenspiel, periphrastic, bouffant, cackle, oldfangled, brigadoon, nohow, cat-salt, indecorous and 39 more...
Noelle Knight "'I've never been a bouncer before,' Charles said conversationally. 'I was the youngest son of a minor baronet, so I've had to make my own way, and I've done many things. I've worked as a bartender before, and many years ago I was a shill for a whorehouse. Stood outside, trumpeted the wares of the strumpets--that's a neat phrase, isn't it?--threw out men who got too rough with the whores. I suppose that's the same as being a bouncer."-Dead as a Doornail, by Charlaine Harris May 18, 2011
bilby "Rosa Luxemburg sez: “The first revolutionary act is to call things by their true names.�? Well then, here goes: Whether we—or Lord Obama—choose to admit it or not, the vaunted “American way of life�? was built on a nearly exterminated indigenous population, the African slave trade, and all those killed in places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East, etc. It was built on stolen land using stolen oil. Our way of life was built on terror and it is maintained by terror: e.g. cops, prisons, military, and the psychological oppression of propaganda.
The exalted Pope of Hope is merely shilling old Kool-Aid in shiny new recyclable bottles. Until we act, we remain accomplices to his global and domestic crimes."
- Mickey Z., 'Obama Nation Upholds US Terror', 15 Jan 2009, foreignpolicyjournal.com. Jan 20, 2009