First of all, I’d like to say I think about this phrase for my books ONLY. 😉 It recently came up in a manuscript I’d read, where a character says, “He cheated on me.” Obviously, we all know what she meant. “Cheat,” is in fact the most common way these days to say someone was unfaithful to a spouse or significant other.
But you know what? That phrase wasn’t recorded until 1934. So all those historicals that have a character accusing another of cheating . . . well, they must mean at cards, right? 😉
There have been a few occasions in my own books where I had this situation too, and my gut told me to look up the usage of the word. When I discovered it was so very modern, that obviously forced me to find the alternate ways of saying this. “Be unfaithful to” was a little wordy, but “betray” always worked well.
I know, I know, what a note to start the week on! LOL. But it’s one of those surprisingly-modern things, so I thought I’d share. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
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