trickery
English
editEtymology
edittrick + -ery, first recorded in 1719. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Old French tricherie?”)
Pronunciation
editNoun
edittrickery (countable and uncountable, plural trickeries)
- (uncountable) Deception, deceit or underhanded behavior.
- 1852, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in Bleak House:
- In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good.
- (uncountable) The art of dressing up; imposture, pretense.
- (uncountable) Artifice; the use of one or more stratagems.
- 2012 April 21, Jonathan Jurejko, “Newcastle 3-0 Stoke”, in BBC Sport[1]:
- French winger Hatem Ben Arfa has also taken plenty of plaudits recently and he was the architect of the opening goal with some superb trickery on the left touchline.
- (countable) An instance of deception, underhanded behavior, dressing up, imposture, artifice, etc.
- 1809, Washington Irving, chapter 47, in Knickerbocker's History of New York:
- [H]e did not wrap his rugged subject in silks and ermines, and other sickly trickeries of phrase.
- 1898, Bret Harte, “See UP”, in Stories in Light and Shadow:
- The miners found diversions even in his alleged frauds and trickeries . . . and were fond of relating with great gusto his evasion of the Foreign Miners' Tax.
Synonyms
editDerived terms
editRelated terms
editTranslations
editunderhanded behavior
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References
edit- “trickery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.