chicanery

Definition

Deception by the use of trickery, quibbling, or subterfuge.

Etymology

From French chicanerie (“trickery”), from chicaner, from Middle French chicaner, borrowed from Middle Low German schicken, from Old Saxon *skikkian, from Proto-West Germanic *skikkijan, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skikkijaną (“to order, arrange”). Related to German schicken (“to send, ship”), Middle English skekken (“to send forth, issue”).

Example Sentences

• "They do not always find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt away, as the poets will have it; or that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from the thief’s hand that grasps it."
• "He covered his tracks, he got that idiot at the copy shop to lie for him. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? He's done worse. That billboard! Are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No! He orchestrated it! Jimmy!"
• "Having survived “The Long Night,” Daenerys will now be turning her attention back to the problem that originally vexed her: Cersei Lannister. It will be interesting to see how the show tries to raise the stakes of an internecine squabble between competing monarchs when compared to an existential threat to humanity’s very existence, but this series has always excelled when it goes deep on the machinations of political chicanery."

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