chicanery

noun

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 (“to order, arrange”). Related to German schicken (“to send, ship”), Middle English skekken (“to send forth, issue”).

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

   “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!”

2. An individual act of trickery or deception.

   “Stanford University's honor code dates to 1921, written by students to help guide them through the minefield of plagiarism, forbidden collaboration, copying and other chicaneries that have tempted undergraduates since they first arrived on college campuses.”

3. The quality of being inclined to trickery or deceitfulness.

   “He carried home with him all the knaviſh chicanery of the loweſt pettifogger, together with a wife whom he had purchſed of a drayman for twenty pounds; and he ſoon found means to obtain a Dedimus as an acting juſtice of peace.”