espieglerie

Etymology

Borrowed from French espièglerie, see espiègle.

espieglerie means Impish or playful behaviour; mischief. Lexicurio rates it Distinctive — a strength score of 67 out of 100.

Why this word is great

ESPIEGLERIE — [Noun] A particular brand of impish or playful mischief, characterized by a light, charming roguishness. Borrowed from French espièglerie, from espiègle ("mischievous, roguish"), itself derived from the German Eulenspiegel ("owl's mirror"), the folkloric trickster Till Eulenspiegel. Unlike "mischief," a broad and often blunt term for troublesome behavior, or "roguery," which implies deceit and self-interest, espièglerie is mischief stripped of malice, distilled to its essence of clever, spirited play. It is the glint in a child's eye before they hide your keys, the deft rearrangement of a bureaucrat's pens into a perfect fan, or the anonymous gift that solves nothing but lightens everything—a minor, conscious rebellion against gravity, where the spirit's lightest touch leaves the deepest imprint.

noun

Impish or playful behaviour; mischief.“I yield to no one in my appreciation of her espieglerie, but I'm one of the rabbits and always have been while she is about as pronounced a dasher as ever dashed. What I like is the quiet life, and Roberta Wickham wouldn't recognize the quiet life if you brought it to her on a plate with watercress round it. She's all for not letting the sun go down without having started something calculated to s”