trickery

From trick +‎ -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?”)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹɪ.kə.ɹi/

• Audio (US):

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trickery (countable and uncountable, plural trickeries)

1. (countable, uncountable) Deception, deceit or underhanded behavior.
   • 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.

   • 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.

   • 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.

2. (uncountable) The art of dressing up; imposture, pretense.
3. (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.

• See Thesaurus:deception

• politrickery

• treachery

• “trickery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.