shell game

1. 1.

   a swindling sleight-of-hand game; victim guesses which of three things a pellet is under

   Synonymsthimblerig

   Broaderswindle

Questions about shell game

What does shell game mean?

shell game means "a swindling sleight-of-hand game; victim guesses which of three things a pellet is under".

What is another word for shell game?

Close synonyms include thimblerig. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is shell game a common word?

shell game is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.