chicanery means deception by the use of trickery, quibbling, or subterfuge. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 75 out of 100.
chicanery is pronounced /ʃɪˈkeɪn(ə)ɹi/.
Why “chicanery” is a great word
CHICANERY — [Noun] Deception achieved through the use of petty trickery, quibbling, or subterfuge. From French chicanerie ("trickery"), from chicaner ("to pettifog, quibble"), likely from Middle Low German schicken ("to arrange, settle"), from Proto-West Germanic *skikkijan ("to order, arrange"). First attested in English c. 1610. Unlike equivocation, which hides in verbal ambiguity, or shenanigans, which suggests playful mischief, chicanery is the cold, deliberate architecture of deceit. It is the labyrinthine clause buried in a contract, the politician's artful dodge that answers a question never asked, and the magician's flourish that directs your eye from the sleight of hand—a testament that dishonesty is often just order patiently applied to a malicious end.
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”).
noun
- 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.”
- 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.”
- 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.”