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Chicane   Listen
Chicane

noun
1.
A bridge hand that is void of trumps.
2.
A movable barrier used in motor racing; sometimes placed before a dangerous corner to reduce speed as cars pass in single file.
3.
The use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them).  Synonyms: chicanery, guile, shenanigan, trickery, wile.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Chicane" Quotes from Famous Books



... barrister, and attended Blackstone's lectures, with the result that he was deeply impressed by the fallacies of the legal theories there expounded, and soon afterward vowed eternal war against the Demon of Chicane. He struggled against narrow means and obscurity until he made the acquaintance of Lord Shelburne, through whom he became acquainted with other leading statesmen, and with Miss Caroline Fox, to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well? It was not an event depending ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... liquid, or be thrown into water deep enough to drown them; and if they underwent such treatment without injury, she held them innocent. Another device was the oath. The parties went to the Church altar and swore their innocence or the justice of their cause. But all these methods gave room for chicane. Kings and knights protested that the oath led to indiscriminate perjury, that if the priests' hands were tickled with money the hot iron was only painted, and that a suitable fee could render the boiling liquid innocuous to the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... advantage of the apices litigandi: against such objections every possible presumption ought to be made which ingenuity can suggest. How disgraceful would it be to the administration of justice to allow chicane to obstruct right!"[75] This observation of Lord Mansfield applies equally to every means by which, indirectly as well as directly, the cause may fail upon any other principles than those of its merits. He thinks ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... most infamous Chief Justice that ever existed in England. Charles II. and James II. well acquainted with his talents for chicane, his debauchery and blood-thirstiness, his baseness and his crimes, made use of him to exterminate, with the sword of law, all those worthy men who defended the constitution ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in Zola's Debacle, most of us, if we are candid, will confess that the Second Empire, especially the Paris of Morny and Hausmann, of cynicism and splendour, of frivolity and chicane, of servile obsequiousness and haughty pretension, the France and the Paris that drew to themselves the eyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck, have for us a fascination almost as great as they had for the gay ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... my liberty and property, sending me from the court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from any share in the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I acknowledged it; but it was too deep even for yourselves: you have made the way so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you err, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... vices will grow most rankly and spread most rapidly in a Republic. When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a reason why the great and wise ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... building was added to building in London contrary to the intention of the original laying-out, and George in his expert capacity wondered how the plans had been kept within the by-laws of the borough, and by what chicane the consent of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... her false guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, when ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... between France and England soon after Edward had settled the Scottish succession. Neither Edward nor Philip the Fair sought a conflict. Edward was satisfied with his diplomatic successes, and Philip's designs upon Gascony were better pursued by chicane than by warfare. But questions arose of a different kind from the disputes as to feudal right, which had been hitherto the principal matters in debate ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest. The extinction of what still ranked as a great royal house was accomplished by chicane, was due to a boundless ambition, and was rendered utterly abhorrent to all divine-right dynasties by the specious pretext of reform under which it was accomplished. This gave ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... in the midst of all the bloodshed, chicane and fraud being resorted to on a colossal scale in the west, the whole humanity is silently but surely making progress towards a better age. And India by finding true independence and self-expression through an imperishable Hindu-Muslim unity and through non-violent means, i.e., unadulterated ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... life of a fool. What had he done in it? He had burnt a rick and got married! He associated the two acts of his existence. Where was the hero he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!—a wretch he had taught to lie and chicane: and for what? Great heavens! how ignoble did a flash from the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear! The young man sought amusement. He allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and sick of that he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the purpose he had in visiting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... we were assembled. It always required considerable address and presence of mind to keep the upper hand of these legal quirk-dealers, these impudent under-strappers, whose whole trade consists in trick and chicane; but I do not recollect ever having been outwitted by any one of them as to the proceedings of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... proprietary authority, and renounce their allegiance. Their letters from Trott served to confirm the truth, which intimated that Yonge, though an officer of the Proprietors, by mean subtilty and chicane had assisted the people in forming plausible pretences for that purpose. For three months Yonge attended the Palatine's court, to give the board all possible information about the state of affairs in their colony, and to accomplish ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... himself go near the place, so this apprentice had gone, on a promise from the Royal Court that he should have for himself—this he demanded as reward—free lodging in two small upper rooms of the Cohue Royale, just under the bell which said to the world, "Chicane—chicane! Chicane—chicane!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... acquainted with China, know what countless facilities exist for his doing indirectly what he dares not, or may choose not, to do openly. We are not without fear, from our knowledge of the Chinese character, and of their long-established mode of procedure, that every chicane and evasion will be resorted to, in order to neutralize and nullify, as far as possible, the commercial advantages which we have, at the cannon's mouth, extorted from them. A great deal, at all events, will depend on the skill, firmness, and vigilance, of the consuls to be appointed at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... stake was down. He could not now take it up. It might well be, for the odds were great against him, that it was to this day that all his life had led up; that life by which men would by-and-by judge him, recalling this and that, this chicane and that extortion, thanking God that he was dead, or perhaps one here and there shrugging his shoulders ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... Brittany, where the state of affairs required his presence. The death of that victorious monarch happened before Richemont's return; and this prince pretended that, as his word was given personally to Henry V., he was not bound to fulfil it towards his son and successor; a chicane which the regent, as he could not force him to compliance, deemed it prudent to overlook. An interview was settled at Amiens between the dukes of Bedford, Burgundy, and Brittany, at which the count of Richemont was also present:[*] the alliance was renewed between these princes: and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... Rangoon is not likely to be missed. The tale itself is a good-humoured little comedy of European and native intrigue, showing how one section of the populace strove as usual to ease the white man's burden by flirtation and gossip, and the other to get the best for themselves by unlimited roguery and chicane. The whole thing culminates in a trial scene which is at once a delightful entertainment and (I should suppose) a shrewdly observed study of the course of Anglo-Burmese justice. I think I would have chosen that Mr. LOWIS should base his fun on something a little less grim ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various

... suicide on the part of the Confederation was met by a new chicane. Though every member, whose character and talents could for a moment redeem the deformity, dulness and decrepitude of the Repeal Association, had passed from its ranks and enrolled themselves in the new League, it resolved to struggle on, acting as a ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny



Words linked to "Chicane" :   trounce, deception, vanquish, bridge hand, cavil, carp, beat, movable barrier, deceit, crush, beat out, object, dissimulation, dupery, screw, jugglery, hoax, shell, dissembling, put-on, fraudulence, fraud, humbug



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