trickster

C2+ Topic:People & Society

US /ˈtrɪkstər/ UK /ˈtrɪkstə/ See IPA manual

Meanings

1

noun
a person who deceives or plays tricks on others

In the folktale, the fox is a cunning trickster.

Thesaurus

Synonyms

1 noun · a person who deceives or... deceiver cheat swindler fraudcon artistrogue charlatan

Word family

Related forms trick trickery tricky

Etymology

From trick (from Old North French trique, from trikier 'to deceive, cheat') + the agentive suffix -ster.

trikier Old French

View etymology graph ->

Topics

People & Society Word Formation & Derivatives

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# trickster

**Type:** Word
**Level:** C2+
**Part of speech:** noun
**IPA (US):** /ˈtrɪkstər/
**IPA (UK):** /ˈtrɪkstə/

## Meanings
1. a person who deceives or plays tricks on others

## Examples
- In the folktale, the fox is a cunning trickster.

## Synonyms
- deceiver
- cheat
- swindler
- fraud
- con artist
- rogue
- charlatan

## Related Forms
- trick
- trickery
- tricky

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: trikier

## Etymology
From trick (from Old North French trique, from trikier 'to deceive, cheat') + the agentive suffix -ster.

## AI Etymology
Trickster comes from trick (from Old North French trique, from trikier 'to deceive, cheat') + the agentive suffix -ster. The historical chain includes Old French trikier. The quoted older sense, "to deceive, cheat," supplies the immediate semantic anchor for trickster. The formation is best read as suffixal, compound, and borrowed: the word trickster carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a person who deceives or plays tricks on others". Related English forms include trick, trickery, and tricky. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.

## Topics
- People & Society
- Word Formation & Derivatives

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trickster

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