Cheating
Overview
Cheating refers to the breaking of rules to gain advantage in a competitive situation. The rules infringed may be explicit, or they may be from an unwritten code of conduct based on morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

, ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

 or custom
Custom
Custom may refer to:* Convention , a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted rules, norms, standards or criteria, often taking the form of a custom* Customization , anything made or modified to personal taste...

, making the identification of cheating a subjective process. Cheating can refer specifically to marital infidelity
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...

. Someone who is known for cheating is referred to as a cheat in British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

, and a cheater in American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....

.
Sports are governed by both customs and explicit rules regarding acts which are permitted and forbidden at the event and away from it.
Quotations

No treaty is ever an impediment to a cheat.

Sophocles, Fragments, l (671)

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.

Herodotus, The Histories, 1.153.1

Doubtless the pleasure is as greatOf being cheated as to cheat.

Samuel Butler (poet)|Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II, canto iii, line i (1664)

L'intention de ne jamais tromper nous expose à être souvent trompés.

Translation: The intention of cheating no one lays us open to being cheated ourselves.

When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit;Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay.Tomorrow's falser than the former day.None would live past years again,Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;And from the dregs of life think to receiveWhat the first sprightly running could not give.

John Dryden, Aureng-Zebe (1676), Act IV, scene i.

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his marketcare into a chariot of the sun. What a day dawns, when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith!

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship,” The Conduct of Life (1860)

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

Franz Kafka, The Third Notebook (December 8, 1917)

 
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