chicanery

Meanings

1. 1
   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.

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, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skikkijaną (“to order, arrange”). Related to German schicken (“to send, ship”), Middle English skekken (“to send forth, issue”).

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