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Does anyone know a word for when someone is cynically overly ingratiating after doing something bad?

English Language & Usage Asked by daftraft on March 30, 2021

My 2 year old daughter spilt water all over my wife’s dress so my wife rushed to the sink. The 2 year old was then overly nice and smiley, possibly in a crafty way, as if she knew she had done something wrong, seemingly to try and ingratiate us afterwards. My wife is Brazilian and said there is a word “tapear” in Portuguese that describes exactly this (Google disagrees and says that means “to cheat”) but I’m not aware of an English equivalent. Is anyone?

One Answer

At first I thought of the expression to butter up or deceivingly obtaining someone's favour.

However, I think that what you are looking for are the slang expressions:

to chisel something out of someone

or

to swindle something out of someone

Note: Both "chisel" and "swindle" can swap objects between them (to swindle something out of someone OR to swindle someone out of something) with almost no difference in meaning.

Answered by fev on March 30, 2021

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