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Trickery   /trˈɪkəri/   Listen
Trickery

noun
1.
Verbal misrepresentation intended to take advantage of you in some way.  Synonyms: hanky panky, hocus-pocus, jiggery-pokery, skulduggery, skullduggery, slickness.
2.
The use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them).  Synonyms: chicane, chicanery, guile, shenanigan, wile.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Trickery" Quotes from Famous Books



... have a fortune to leave them. O man and woman! have you not learned that, like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches have wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving a competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in a night; or some elders or deacons of our churches may get up an oil company, or some sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the church, and induce your orphans to put their money ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... "Louisiana" was a bit of trickery on the part of the Confederate naval officers, which Farragut punished by sending them North as close prisoners, while the army officers were granted freedom under parole. So ended the Confederate control over the mouth of the Mississippi; ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... back to his office. "I don't wonder," he thought, as he stood looking at the ink-stains on his desk and floor, "that people think politics nothing but trickery and scoundrelism. Yet such vile weapons and slanders would not be used if there were not people vile and mean enough at heart to let such things influence them. The fault is not in politics. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... her lips, who could not possibly have done a dishonourable action, had posed for me so simply and fearlessly, viewing the whole matter from that artistic standpoint which is so lofty because so really pure; and this girl, whose soul, as I knew, was full of trickery and treachery, and whose lips were worn with lies, clothed herself about with this ridiculous prudery and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... and attainments distinguishing them above their fellow-men of the country. Throughout the State, to such men there was great deference, and the instances were rare where it was not deserved. The discipline and trickery of party was unknown, nor was it possible that these could exist among a people who, universally, honestly desired and labored to be represented by their best men. To attain to the high position of senator or representative in Congress was so distinguishing a mark of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... chief criterion of reputability at present have a dubious relation to high mental or moral endowment, far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions, rightly awarded, are an aid, not ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... the nation: the inevitable period of moral retrogression and political trickery that ever follows in the wake of war overtook us. So flagrant became the political scandals that reputable men began to leave politics alone, and politics consequently became disreputable. Men began to pride themselves on having nothing to do with their own government, and to agree tacitly ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... witness) was accurately placed. The price of relays was, in reality, fixed by law; but though over-affirmation had now aroused my suspicions, in my ignorance of the situation I could not espy the loophole of trickery in which I was to be noosed, and I agreed once more. More quibbling. He would not stir unless he were allowed to drive the same horses the whole distance, though paid for three relays, because all the horses would be away harvesting, and so forth and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... then?" she quickly drew back, like a snail when the crashing foot is coming upon it, and drew the horns within the shell which covered it; and, yesterday, corrected the date. She changed the date and put it back from November to October. I congratulate her upon the change! For all the trickery and malice which were embodied in it, only enured to the prisoner's benefit. It was here sworn, to-day, that on the 17th of November last, her watch and chain (her watch and chain, gentlemen) not Mr. Lynch's, but Eliza Bethune's, was pledged in New York ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... we have only indignation for the man weighted with far worse things, and things which, in some cases at least, he can just as little help. You have known men whose extra pounds, or even extra ton, was a hasty temper, flying out of a sudden into ungovernable bursts: or a moral cowardice leading to trickery and falsehood: or a special disposition to envy and evil-speaking: or a very strong tendency to morbid complaining about their misfortunes and troubles: or an invincible bent to be always talking of their sufferings through the derangement of their digestive organs. Now, you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... had had no practice in trickery and, feeling themselves in the wrong, took up such ridiculous and uncomfortable attitudes that the Fairy, the moment she appeared upon the ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... taken up his abode with the medium and her son during his short stays in New York, with the openly expressed intention of finding out if there were any trickery behind the scenes. He had, however, convinced himself of her bona fides, and was deeply interested in the interviews he was able to obtain by means of these mediums, with a daughter he had lost some years previously. He was much pleased to find that I knew Mrs Gray already and ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... art, is so fine that it is quite extraordinary that any one should have missed the point of it, since it is the whole point of the monologue. Sludge the Medium has been caught out in a piece of unquestionable trickery, a piece of trickery for which there is no conceivable explanation or palliation which will leave his moral character intact. He is therefore seized with a sudden resolution, partly angry, partly frightened, and partly humorous, to become absolutely frank, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... above-mentioned publications,] we must still protest against any other than definite charges, even against men whose daily deeds and utterances of treason have been of more real service to the South than all the trash and trickery of Quack Bickley himself. It is indeed charged that 'these are the principal names on the lists of traveling messengers for those States,' but it should be remembered that such accusation requires clear proof. With this single exception, we commend the pamphlet in question as a document well ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... my death, fully persuaded in soul and conscience that, in doing so, I am giving to each their just and proper due." "Is this," asked M. Roussel, "a document wrested by surprise from a weak man, extorted by trickery? Is he not acting in the full exercise of his faculties? He forgets no one, and justifies ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... him Guene: "Thou shalt not go for me. Thou'rt not my man, nor am I lord of thee. Charles commnds that I do his decree, To Sarraguce going to Marsilie; There I will work a little trickery, This mighty wrath of mine I'll thus let free." When Rollanz heard, began to laugh for ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... What object can anyone have in scaring me to death? Besides, there is no one in the room, that I can swear. My outer door is locked, Lady Studley's outer door is locked. It is impossible that there can be any trickery in ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... king!" the birds cried in anger; "you have done this by trickery and cunning. We will not have you ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... never called upon, nor did my name appear in any way, for that the jury would never have understood it.) I had, therefore, a double danger to guard against; first that which came from the conspirators—the fear that they should discover I was tricking them, or rather that I had discovered their trickery; and, on the other side, that I should become involved with them in the fall that was so certain from the beginning, and be myself accused of conspiracy—or of misprision of treason at the least. Against the latter I guarded as well as I could, by revealing to Mr. Chiffinch ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while still keeping his eyes on me—in spite of it all to have him so close, and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards despise our superior cunning and feel ashamed, as when we slaughter wild birds with far-reaching shot, which ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... as the other. A murmur of awe went over the congregation. Symeon rose and strode out of the synagogue, followed by the religious officials of Capernaum. Outside, Symeon turned to the others and declared firmly: "We must save our holy religion at all costs. He has won over the people with his trickery, but God is on our side! We must go to King Herod and ask him to help us put this man ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith

... outrage, sir, an unspeakable outrage," declared Mr. Gale, hotly. "Such a thing would not be tolerated in the East. Mr. Belding, I'm amazed at your attitude in the face of all this trickery." ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... a much higher section than either Dick or myself," admitted Greg truthfully; but he did not think it necessary to explain the trickery and cribbing by which Dodge had secured ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... case," said Captain Marchand, "why should we resort to trickery? If his men want his ship and don't want him, why can't we seize him when he comes on board with his letters, and then let his men know that they are free to go to the devil in any way they please? Then we can convey Major Bonnet to ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... The trickery of the League would fill a volume, for Marten especially is particularly clever. He leapt into fame in Berlin by going to Belgium "at his own risk," as he says, to refute the charges of German cruelty there. His book on Belgium, and a later one ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... rising from his chair—"friends from the bottomless pit could not have more foully and fatally deceived that poor, thoughtless, trustful child. But all their trickery and treachery could never have succeeded had they not found a paltry tool in a senseless creature like you—you, Sir—who could stand there and go mumbling your marriage service, and never see the infernal jugglery that was going ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... in the former respect as the rebellion grows. They flame brighter and brighter in the deepening darkness. From the lowest abyss the stars are seen most clearly. He is far more buoyant when he is an exile once more in the wilderness, and when the masks of plot and trickery are fallen, and the danger stands clear before him. Like some good ship issuing from the shelter of the pier heads, the first blow of the waves throws her over on her side and makes her quiver like a living thing recoiling from a terror, but she rises ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... it was yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic outbursts which overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal favorites, affording a better insight into the state-craft of that day than can be had even by an exhaustive study of history. It is a powerful romance of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling and absorbing interest ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... though it is difficult to conceive how the Pope can assist any one of them to the detriment of another, an Ambassador will put his veto upon any cardinal whom he thinks unfavourable to his nation; this produces all sorts of trickery, for when the Conclave want to elect a man who is obnoxious to Austria, for example, they choose another whom they think is equally so (but whom they do not really wish to elect), that the veto may be expended upon him, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... praise-worthy qualities of courage, love, unselfishness, truth, industry, and humility are portrayed in the dealings of the field and forest folk and the consequential reward of these virtues is clearly shown; he also reveals the unhappy results of greed, jealousy, trickery and other character weaknesses. The effect is to impress indelibly upon the imagination of the child that certain deeds are their own desirable reward while certain others are much better ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey

... and furious. How had he ever become intimate enough with Gentleman Laroque to be associated with the other in such a crime as this? How had Laroque come to play a part in the miserable scheme of trickery that was the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... great artist in the old mountebank, and I was quite sure that he was altogether incapable of any trickery. I told him so, while expressing my admiration to him; and he had been touched by my open admiration and above all by the justice I had done him. Thus we became good friends, and he explained to me, very modestly, the real trick which the crowd do not understand, the eternal trick contained ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... is pleasant to play by, with breaking waves to wade in, and little treasures thrown up on its rim; then, as one knows more, one realises that it is another world, full of its own urgent life, quite regardless of man, and over which man has no power, except by a little trickery in places. Man is just a tiresome, far-off incident, his ships like little moving shadows, his nets and lines like small fretful devices. But the old wise monsters of the depths live their own lives; never seen perhaps, or even suspected, by men. That's all very ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... contact, of certain medicated or fermented substances on hypnotic subjects. The latter were all women who could not possibly have got their cue beforehand, and were being observed, while Dr. Luys operated, by a jury of scientists above all suspicion of having lent themselves to any trickery. Alcohol when put to the nape in a tube no larger than a homoeopathist's vial and hermetically sealed produced exactly the same effect as if imbibed at a bar. Absinthe, haschish, opium, morphine, beer, champagne, tea ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... had been any one of the others," he thought to himself; "and then to think that he turns around and with a look virtually makes me a party to his tuppenny trickery!" ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... boats, See how the bright foam bursts around their bows! See how the bare-legged sailors walk the decks! Then, quickly looking up, as if to catch The vision, ere it tricked them, all they saw Was empty sea again. Many believed That all was trickery, but he bade them note The colours of the boats, and count their sails. Then, in a little while, the naked eye Saw on the sky-line certain specks that grew, Took form and colour; and, within an ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... chiaroscuro as they did of perspective, and as little of spiritual expression as they did of landscape-painting. What do I care for the birds pecking at Zeuxis's grapes, or Zeuxis himself trying to draw back Parrhasius's curtain? Imitative art is the lowest trickery. There are twenty men in England now capable of the same sleight of hand; and yet these are recorded as the very highest triumphs of ancient art by the only men who have handed down to us any ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... Elizabeth herself. If they found her fully a match for them at their own game, we can hardly reproach her if we cannot applaud. But it is notable that in England, the arch-dissembler is Elizabeth herself. It is she who manages the undignified but eminently successful trickery of the marriage negotiations. It is she who evades committing herself irrevocably to the Huguenots or to the Prince of Orange. It is she who preserves Mary's restoration as a possibility, to be held ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... His Majestu's Cabinet were masterpieces of political trickery, and their adoption was a foregone conclusion in spite of the Ministers who raised objections. The party had to win back favour somehow, and at any rate his were the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... love-story. But it is a love-story with a logical ending. Which means that in the last paragraph no one has any one else in his arms. Since logic and love have long been at loggerheads, the story may end badly. Still, what love passages there are shall be left intact. There shall be no trickery. There shall be no running breathless, flushed, eager-eyed, to the very gateway of Love's garden, only to bump one's nose against that baffling, impregnable, stone-wall phrase of "let us draw a veil, dear reader." This is the story of the love of a man for a woman, a mother ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... American into an unorganized, struggling crowd. There is an enormous premium in the American's world upon force and dexterity, and force in the case of common men too often degenerates into brutality, and dexterity into downright trickery and cheating. He has got to be forcible and dexterous within his self-respect if he can. There is an enormous discount on any work that does not make money or give a tangible result, and except in the case of those whose lot has fallen within certain prescribed circles, certain ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... venerated name to designs that were subversive of Pontifical rule. Neither inexperience nor ignorance of constitutions presents any valid excuse, or even palliation of such a proceeding. No doubt they called it policy. It was the basest trickery. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... qualifies this statement with the significant condition, "If we are not checked by fraud." And I fancy that he would have a perfect right to justify his present position by demonstrating the fraud, trickery, if not treason, by which Norway has during the last decade been thwarted in her aspirations and checked in her development. That preface, by the way, dated Paris, October, 1885, is one of the most forceful and luminous of his political pronunciamientos. It rings from beginning to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... to their homes. There is no telling what disorder might have taken place had they been permitted to remain. The group of Hilltops that surrounded Pen as he marched up the street and explained the situation to them, was loud in its condemnation of the meanness and trickery of Aleck Sands; and the party of Riverbeds that walked down with Aleck was jubilant over the clever way in which he had outwitted his opponent, and had, by obtaining honor for himself, conferred honor ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... you keep on that way you will be bound to prosper. No one ever yet gained much by resorting to trickery ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... has fallen into very different hands!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Yes, they've got it away from us by trickery, just as one wheedles a child out of a thing," cried Morten morosely. "But there's no real efficiency in anything that children do—and the poor have never been anything more than children! Only now they are beginning to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... conclude the narrative of these interesting Africans. After all the trickery on the part of the U.S. government, it was finally decreed by the Supreme Court, that the Mendians were free persons, and might go whither they pleased. They were unanimous for returning to their native country. The Mendian negroes, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... "David Copperfield" is a plain tale, simply told; and such are all books that live. Eccentricities of style, artistic trickery, may please the critic of a day, but literature is a story that interests us, boys and girls, men and women. It is a sad book; and that, again, gives it an added charm in these sad later days. Humanity is nearing its old age, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... the bird was sullen and refused to answer, but at Maui's rough treatment resorted to trickery and replied, "Rub two taro stalks together and ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai

... of the person holding them. I know nothing of that, nor of what letters they are, nor who published them, nor when and where they were issued. But I do know what Posh has told me, and if the volume (if there is one) was published in America by one innocent of trickery, here is his chance to come forward ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth

... individual rights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into account ordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that was discontented, but all over the country those who lived upon small invested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by the trickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities, who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in the games they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorly compensated by reflections ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... trusted to the substantial goodness and greatness of the character, and thought I should only make it more effective in portraiture by keeping in the few specks. I despise with my heels the whole trickery of erecting an alabaster image, and calling that a Man.... The work is now done, and I leave it to its fate. I had no personal object to gratify except, indeed, that I wished and hoped to please my poor wife." From a letter ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... serve, mutatis mutandis, with criminals. As soon as ever real balkiness is noted, it becomes necessary to avoid the least appearance of contradictoriness, since that increases difficulties. It is not necessary to lie or to make use of trickery. Only, avoid direct contradiction, drop the subject in question, and return to it indirectly when you perceive that the obstinate individual recognizes his error. Then you may succeed in building him a golden bridge, or at least a barely visible sidedoor where he ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... was likely to lead to their detection should they attempt to dispose of it in its present form. Some of the things were hid away; the others, after undergoing various operations, were re-shipped with such perfectly different marks, that it would have been impossible to detect them. Cunning and trickery seemed to be now the means taken by the pirates to carry on their operations, instead of the bold, daring way in which, as I had read, their predecessors ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... up a storm at the grey-beards, and said I could not stand going out of my road to see any one now, for I had already lost so much time by Makaka's trickery in Sorombo. Bui then, quaking with fright at my obstinacy, said, "You must—indeed you must—give in and do with these savage chiefs as the Arabs when they travel, for I will not be a party to riding rough-shod over ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... age. I do not deny that working at moments of fever-heat, and when one feels inclined, may be the best plan. But I do blame a man for working little or not at all, and for wasting all his time over cogitations, seeing that the wish to arrive by trickery at a goal to which one cannot attain, often brings it about that one loses what one knows in seeking after that which it is not given to us to know. If Francesco, who had from nature a spirit of great vivacity, with a beautiful and graceful manner, had persisted in working every day, little by ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... fortune as yours will be, it is necessary to spend money unstintingly and to have lots of patience. Court proceedings will be useless, as trickery and lies are necessary to get the best of the scoundrels. It is necessary ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... men; for he had never stood so near the little gods that harness society to their policies, never till now had he seen with his own eyes how the world is steered. The upshot of endless talk and trickery was the nomination of Birmingham, and the placing of an independent ticket in the field with ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... early. Von Tielitz and Messer also boasted of their present-day mistresses who were so often changed for reasons of economy. The hilarious game, as Gard learned, was to obtain favors in exchange for nothing as far as possible. Trickery, lies, abuse, kicks, were employed to this purpose. Female chastity? A fable for the impotent. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... chiff-chaff trickery this time. Spring is here," said the thrush, "and here's all the company coming. All the swallow family are over, and here's the wryneck been playing a tune upon its comb all the morning; as for those sit-up-o'-night birds, they've been sing-sing, till I'm almost tired ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... work of assemblies of lawgivers who had the power and the desire to make them as good as possible. But we all know how our laws are made. We have all been behind the scenes, we know that they are the product of covetousness, trickery, and party struggles; that there is not and cannot be any real justice in them. And so modern men cannot believe that obedience to civic or political laws can satisfy the demands of the reason or of human nature. Men have long ago recognized that it is irrational ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... "in the West a man who cheats at cards is damned everlastingly, but a nation is acclaimed who takes the land with all its wealth from some wretched, half-educated native; takes it by force of arms or diplomacy, which, nine times out of ten, means trickery. Yes! Acclaimed with such adjectives as valiant, strong, beneficent, applauded to the skies, whilst reams are written anent the glorious, victorious campaign. Victorious! Allah! When the nation goes out with artillery and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... mental progress of the New England of to-day, the wild speculation upon all questions of morals and religion, rivalling in their daring scope the most impious theories of the German metaphysicians, which our New England fosters and sustains, and above all, the proverbial trickery of the Yankee race, are but the reaction of the stern and gloomy tenets of that olden time which would have made of our earth a charnel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the perpetual problem if Vanity Fair be a cynic's view of life, the sardonic grin of a misanthrope gloating over the trickery and meanness of mankind. It is well to remember how many are the scenes of tenderness and pathos in Vanity Fair, how powerfully told, how deeply they haunt the memory and sink into the heart. The school life of Dobbin, the ruin of old Sedley and the despair ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... ceremony at the Tower and at various other parts of the metropolis. In vain has an Act of Parliament been passed for the suppression of bonfires—November asserts her rights, and will have her modicum of "flare up" in spite of the law; but with the trickery of an Old Bailey barrister she has thrown the onus upon October. Nor is this all! Like a traitorous Eccalobeion she has already hatched several conspiracies, as though everybody now thought of getting rid of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world; and we never expel a foreigner, or prevent him from seeing or learning any thing of which the secret, if revealed to an enemy, might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. And here is the proof,—the Lacedaemonians ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... are so. I say this with all the more pleasure because I know that there are present three gentlemen of great eminence in the world of science, and if they are not able to detect me in anything approaching trickery, I think you will take their word for it that I am ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... not seem strange that young men who know these facts should try to build up a business on a foundation of cunning, scheming, and trickery, instead of building on the solid rock of character, reliability, and manhood? Is it not remarkable that so many men should work so hard to establish a business on an unreliable, flimsy foundation, instead of building upon the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... in Rhodesia who speak of him without love. They describe him as the greatest land thief that ever rode a Zeedersburg coach from Port Charter to Salisbury to register land that he had obtained by trickery. They tell stories of those wonderful coach drives of his with relays of twelve mules waiting every ten miles. They speak of his gambling propensities, of ten-thousand-acre farms that changed hands at the turn of a card, and there are stories that are less printable. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... are seldom wise, or men just. How should we expect them to be when but yesterday woman was a chattel and man a slave-owner? Woman won by diplomacy—that is to say, by trickery and untruth, and man had his way through force, and neither is quite willing to disarm. An amalgamated personality is the rare exception, because neither Church, State nor Society yet fully recognizes the fact that spiritual ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... question which only two or three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer it to me before long. I tell you, my lady, that I am determined to unravel the mystery of George Talboy's death. Do you think I am to be put off by feminine prevarication—by womanly trickery? No! Link by link I have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here and there to be complete in its terrible strength. Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... racing wildly toward the corner. Lutie, aghast at this disgusting exhibition of trickery, watched the flying figure of her husband. She never knew that she was clinging to the arm of the driver. She only knew that her heart seemed to have turned to lead. As he turned the corner and disappeared from view, she found her voice and ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... appearances and the seance was upon the whole perhaps the most remarkable that Mr. E—— ever held. It was all the more remarkable because the surroundings were such that the most prejudiced skeptic could discover no possibility of trickery. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... as the envy of two or three men, who try, by means of trickery, to prevent and thwart any affair or action of another, is very usual and well known in this country; and it is to be presumed of these men that they will not, even if they can, pardon this conquest; and as they say slyly that the share of the citizens in the cargo ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... but you just wait till I have told you all about Ombos, and the bronze statue. Then you'll be able to decide if it was trickery.... It would be different if you ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... was a consideration; that at any rate the Dona Margaret wished it. On the day arranged for the wedding the prisoners were let go, disguised as Moors, but he now knew that through the trickery of the woman Inez, whom he believed had been bribed by Castell and his fellow-Jews, the Dona Margaret escaped in place of her servant, Betty, with whom he subsequently went through the form of marriage, believing ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... such times as these every lover of liberty should go armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by trickery Louisianians had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of parvenues, to be dragged before juries for asserting the human right of free trade or ridding the earth of sneaks in the pay of the government; that laws, so-called, had been ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... "I have no patience with such aesthetic hod-carriers! Truth, indeed! Is there no other truth in art but that coarse verisimilitude, that vulgar trickery, which appeals to the eyes and the ears of the rabble? Are there not psychological truths of immensely greater importance? What sane man imagines for a moment that the pleasure he derives from seeing that greatest of all tragedians, Edwin Booth, in one of Shakespeare's matchless ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... from room to room, meeting no one; and, weary of his vain search, prepared at last to occupy a comfortable couch in one of the chambers. To his utter amazement, however, the bed retreated as he advanced, until, impatient at this trickery, he sprang boldly upon it. A moment later a rain of sharp spears and daggers fell upon his couch, but did him no harm, for he had not removed his heavy armor. When the rain of weapons was over, a gigantic peasant, armed with a huge club, stalked into the room, closely followed ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... one of the greatest job lots of political trickery and deception that was ever attempted in America has been practiced in the United States since ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... To head off political trickery on the part of the enemy he secured bills for material as delivered, and publicly compared them with prices paid for similar amounts of the same material used in other buildings. So the public was kept aware of what was going on and the cry of cheapness for political purposes ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... the master. He was ambitious enough to be contented with nothing short of the highest rank of overseers, and persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He was cruel enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the most dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye flashed confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without producing horror ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... article Webb was indicted by the grand jury of Otsego County, in February, 1839. In June of the same year a second indictment was found against him for saying that the first was secured by political trickery. The trial, for various reasons, did not come off until November, 1841. Webb made a public retraction of the statements upon which the second indictment was found; and this was accepted on the part of the prosecution. On the trial for the first indictment the jury disagreed. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... interrupted; "Mr. Vetch is a very dear friend of mine, and I would lay my life he is innocent of any share of the trickery that lost ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... he could pick out exactly the kind of slave he wanted at any price from the equivalent of L10 upwards. The unfortunate human being was exhibited exactly as horses are now, and could be stripped, handled, trotted about, and treated with every kind of indignity, and of course the same sort of trickery went on in these human sales as is familiar to all horse-dealers of the present day.[322] The buyer, if he wanted a valuable article, a Greek, for example, who could act as secretary or librarian, like Cicero's beloved Tiro, or even a household slave ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... friend Toby enjoyed, probably from his docility over-much,—like good-natured men who are mastered by those of rough natures. We could have staid here a whole hour, watching their antics, and likening them to the little trickery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... of intellectual trickery such as Shakspeare too often played with, and Donne laboured at; and one of a special interest because we see it again later transformed and purified in the famous passage of Paradise Lost, in which "Silence was pleased" not only ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... bluff; straw-bail, straw bid [U.S.]; spoof*. delusion, gullery[obs3]; juggling, jugglery[obs3]; slight of hand, legerdemain; prestigiation|, prestidigitation; magic &c 992; conjuring, conjuration; hocus-pocus, escamoterie[obs3], jockeyship[obs3]; trickery, coggery|, chicanery; supercherie[obs3], cozenage[obs3], circumvention, ingannation|, collusion; treachery &c 940; practical joke. trick, cheat, wile, blind, feint, plant, bubble, fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... very effective finale, but still Amelia suspected no trickery. The situation seemed to her, just as the two new actors did, entirely simple, like the course of nature. Only, the day was a little warmer because they had appeared. She had a new sensation of welcome company. So it was that, quite to ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... own evil purpose. Some call me 'Friend.' 'A friend told me,' saith one, 'that so and so does not intend leaving a single farthing to his wife, and that there is no love lost between them.' Others further disgrace me and call me a crow: 'a crow tell me there is some trickery going on,' they say. Yea, some call me by a more honoured name—Old Man, and yet not a half of the omens, prophecies, and cures attributed to me are really mine. I never counselled walking the old way if the new were better, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... 'house of merchandise'; now, with turning it into a robber's cave. Evil rebuked and done again is worse than before. Trafficking in things pertaining to the altar is even more likely than other trading to cross the not always very well defined line which separates trade from trickery and commerce from theft. That lesson needs to be laid to heart in many quarters now. There is always a fringe of moneyed interests round Christ's Church, seeking gain out of religious institutions; and their stands have a wonderful tendency to creep inwards from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... involved the addition of other substances for the purpose of separating the gold; and it has been suggested that the gold produced by him was itself added during this process. There is no good reason for thinking so. Pyrites often contains a minute proportion of gold. Admitting the possibility of trickery in the case of the small specimen submitted to Agnello, it is incredible that the fraud should have been successfully repeated when the two hundred tons of mineral brought back by the second expedition came to be tested. The mineral undoubtedly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... sternness. If addicted to sharp practice in business no one would be likely to suspect it, not even his victim. Could one have looked steadily into his eyes one might find there a certain gleam to warn one of trickery, only one would not be able to look steadily into them, for the reason that they would not allow you. They were shifty, crafty eyes that took one's measure when one least ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the nerves; inspiriting influence of the journey, the prayers, and the hymns; and especially the healing breath, the unknown force which was evolved from the multitude, in the acute crisis of faith. Thus it seemed to him anything but intelligent to believe in trickery. The facts were both of a much more lofty and much more simple nature. There was no occasion for the Fathers of the Grotto to descend to falsehood; it was sufficient that they should help in creating confusion, that they should utilise the universal ignorance. It might even be admitted ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Master Gridley not only knew a good deal of human nature, but he knew how to keep his knowledge to himself upon occasion. He understood singularly well the ways and tendencies of young people. He was shrewd in the detection of trickery, and very confident in those who had once passed the ordeal of his well-schooled observing powers. He had no particular tendency to meddle with the personal relations of those about him; but if they were forced upon him in any way, he was like to see into them at least as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... "Honest! It's low-down trickery. And they all do it. Last year when I was going up to Beersheba I happened to sit in the same seat with a Catholic priest. We got to talking, I don't remember just how, and I said something about doubting the Pope's infallibility. Out pops the same old text: 'My ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... and divides his property among his children, and gives directions that all his creditors should be paid and that his debts should be collected. Then the witnesses write out the will, and he goes his way and is seen no more. And by means of this trickery and witchcraft which these priests practise, the people are confirmed in their errors and assert that there is none in all ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... it is not good for business and not very good for the Empire. What we have to get over is something psychological—the belief in 'the dirty Hun,' the belief in German trickery and spite." ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... to think,' said the single gentleman, sternly regarding him, 'of you, who, plainly indisposed to give me any information then—nay, obviously holding back, and sheltering yourself with all kinds of cunning, trickery, and evasion—are ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... was of that rugged type common among the pioneers of the West, lean and harsh-featured, yet nobly austere, the guarantee of a soul above corruption and small trickery, of a nature that endures patiently, of an anger slow to move. There were bright hues as of glistening metal in his close-cut light hair as he stood bareheaded in ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... said, "I should have suspected you sooner, but it did not occur to me that human nature could be so vile. To undertake such risks and to use so much trickery and guile there must be a powerful motive, and in your case I can't guess it. Now, Weber, why ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... sign of trickery, meanness, and quarrels among relations, money matters probably being the disturbing cause; a cat ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... the mountain side, faithfully written out, but no more than should be put down by any conscientious painter for mere guidance, before he begins his work, properly so called; and in finishing such a subject no trickery nor shorthand is of any avail whatsoever; there are a certain number of trees to be drawn; and drawn they must be, or the place will not bear its proper character. They are not misty wreaths of soft wood suggestible by a sweep or two ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... established fraternal feelings between the contending parties. But it required ages of suffering and peculiar combination of circumstances, to lead the king and the nobles to a cordial consent to that toleration. But the bigotry of Rhodolph and the trickery of Matthias, had so exasperated the parties, and rendered them so suspicious of each other, that the emperor, even had he been so disposed, could not, but by very slow and gradual steps, have secured reconciliation. Rhodolph had put what was called the ban of the empire upon the Protestant ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... a personal interview for the purpose of setting forth his claims, do you think that Hugh Mainwaring would be bamboozled by any of his cheap trickery? No, sir, not for one moment. He would simply pronounce the whole thing a sham. Well, sir, if you will recall some of the testimony at the inquest, you will see that is precisely what occurred. Hugh Mainwaring, within twenty or thirty minutes preceding his death, was heard ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... sea-shore, Sir Artegall perceives a charlatan provided with scales in which he pretends to weigh all things anew. Thereupon Sir Artegall, by weighing such intangible things as truth and falsehood, right and wrong, demonstrates that the charlatan's scales are false, and, after convicting him of trickery, drowns him in ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Even between village and village the usual restraints of public morality are not always recognized. What would be called theft or robbery at home is called a successful raid or conquest if directed against distant villages; and what would be falsehood or trickery in private life is honored by the name of policy and diplomacy if successful against strangers. On the other hand, the rules of hospitality applied only to people of other villages, and a man of the same village could never claim the right of an ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... Jack Slack, I may as well give his name at once, for I hate the trickery of authors who keep the curiosity of their readers painfully excited to the end of their narratives for the purpose of producing an effect. My professional habits as a writer prompt me to do the same; but I must not forget that I am writing my own history, and not an effusion of my imagination, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... full Gipsy, but he spoke better English, as well as better Rommany, than his neighbours, and had far more refinement of manner. And singularly enough, he appeared to be simpler hearted and more unaffected, with less Gipsy trickery, and more of a disposition for honest labour. His brother and uncle were, indeed, hard at work among the masons in a new building not far off, though they lived like true Gipsies in a tent. Petulamengro, as the name is commonly given at the present day, was evidently ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... person. He seems to have been a kindly, idle, honourable man, who died, says Pope, of indolence, and more immediately, it appears, of the gout. The alliance thus formed was rather a delicate one, and was embittered by some of Pope's usual trickery. In issuing his proposals he spoke in ambiguous terms of two friends who were to render him some undefined assistance, and did not claim to be the translator, but to have undertaken the translation. The ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... doubt a ground of remorse; and though the severity of his opening chapters is somewhat ostentatious, there is no intrinsic mark of insincerity about them. They are, it is true, quite superfluous. Iugurtha's trickery can be understood without a preliminary discourse on the immortality of the soul; and Catiline's character is not such as to suggest a preface on the dignity of writing history. But with all their inappropriateness, these introductions are valuable specimens of the writer's best ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Berlin. Already the British were sending tribute money to their conquerors, and the principal reason why the war continued was that the British could not find enough donkeys to carry all the gold to Berlin, and to prevent trickery of any kind the fighting must continue until the last coin should have ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... But that is all extraneous association. The most ordinary way in which utility affects us is negatively; if we know a thing to be useless and fictitious, the uncomfortable haunting sense of waste and trickery prevents all enjoyment, and therefore banishes beauty. But this is also an adventitious complication. The intrinsic value of a form is in ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... elevation of mind, or purity of soul, or knowledge, or breadth of view; it is the lowest, basest part of the intellect. It is the trait of foxes, monkeys, crows, rats and other vermin. It delights in holes and subterranean shelters; it will not disdain filth; it is capable of lying, stealing, trickery, knavery. Let me give you ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... wouldn't think of coming across later on, when you'll be practicing your signal stunts, and different mass plays," hastily remarked the other, coloring a bit with embarrassment. "If Marshall does carry off that game I want to see it won on merit, not trickery. Football isn't a game where such things should be tolerated. Once a chap from Harmony was discovered watching our late signal work. He had a pair of field-glasses, and was perched on top of an old ruined chimney, from which place he had a fine view of the field. We didn't do a thing ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... yet to acquire this finesse. As we are now privileged to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table, as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman polluting ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this—not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... not to prolong or extend your existence, but to preserve it so far and so long as heaven pleases. Your freedom and your power extend as far and no further than your natural strength; anything more is but slavery, deceit, and trickery. Power itself is servile when it depends upon public opinion; for you are dependent on the prejudices of others when you rule them by means of those prejudices. To lead them as you will, they must be ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... men of light weight too. One or other of them was constantly looking back. As night fell they closed in upon us with their usual care. When Bure joined us there was a gleam of intelligence in his bold eyes, a flash of conscious trickery. He knew that we had found him out, and cared ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... dignity. He woos as a victorious warrior, and receives a cuff; as a generous goldsmith, and gets a buffet; as a handsome soldier, earning a heavy knock-down blow; but in the garb of a women as Wecha (Wakr), skilled in leechcraft, he won his way by trickery; and ("Wale") "Bous" was born, who, after some years, slew Hother in battle, and died himself of his wounds. Bous' barrow in Bohusland, Balder's haven, Balder's well, are named as local attestations of the legend, which is in a late form, as ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... every ball-player and spectator of the game, there were wise men who proclaimed its impossibility, who declared it to be simply an "optical delusion," and its believers the victims of the pitcher's trickery. It was only after the curve had been practically demonstrated to them, in a way which left no room for doubt, that they consented to find for ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... back alleys and which he loved even in its slums. When he ran across some rare and precious piece, or something that merely appealed to his individual taste, he derived an intense joy out of employing all his trickery, his readiness of speech, his persuasive powers, to beat down the price of the coveted object. It was a battle in which he chose to come out conqueror. It pleased him to be recognised as a man with the business instinct; and he threw ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... What do you know, Thad? The chances are ten to one if anything in the way of trickery is contemplated I can put my hand on the fellow who's guilty ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson



Words linked to "Trickery" :   hoax, deception, dissimulation, dupery, humbug, fraudulence, fraud, trick, misrepresentation, dissembling, jugglery, put-on, deceit



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