chicanery

From French chicanerie (“trickery”), from chicaner.

• IPA^(key): /ʃɪˈkeɪn(ə)ɹi/

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chicanery (countable and uncountable, plural chicaneries)

1. Deception by use of trickery, quibbling, or subterfuge.
   • 2019 April 28, Alex McLevy, “Game Of Thrones suffers the fog of war in the battle against the dead (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club‎:

     Having survived “The Long Night,” Daenerys will now be turning her attention back to the problem that originally vexed her: Cersei Lannister. It will be interesting to see how the show tries to raise the stakes of an internecine squabble between competing monarchs when compared to an existential threat to humanity’s very existence, but this series has always excelled when it goes deep on the machinations of political chicanery.

   • 1823, Charles Lamb, “Popular Fallacies”, in Elia, new edition, London: Edward Moxon, published 1835, →ISBN, page 241:

     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 theif’s hand that grasps it.

2. (countable, law) A slick performance by a lawyer.

• (deception): dishonesty, fraud, trickery, subterfuge

• chicane

• (performance by a lawyer): Philadelphia lawyer

• “chicanery” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.