legerdemain

Borrowed from Middle French leger de main (literally “light of hand”), a phrase that meant "dexterous, skillful at fooling others (especially through sleights of hand"), which was however treated as a noun when it was borrowed by late Middle English. The Modern French descendant léger de main of the Middle French phrase is archaic and incomprehensible to most but still sometimes found in older literature (e.g. Morand, 1954) and simply means "skillful" without any connotation of sleight of hand.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌlɛdʒ.ə.dɨˈmeɪn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈlɛdʒ.əɹ.dəˌmeɪn/

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• Audio (UK)

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  Rhymes: -eɪn

• Hyphenation: leg‧er‧de‧main

legerdemain (usually uncountable, plural legerdemains)

1. Sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.9:

     For he in slights and jugling feates did flow, / And of legierdemayne the mysteries did know.

2. A show of skill or deceitful ability.
   • 1673, Gilbert Burnet, The mystery of iniquity unvailed, London, p. 128:

     Certainly, that they are to this day so rife in Italy and Spain, and so scant in Britain, is a shrewd ground to apprehend Legerdemain, and forgery, in the accounts we get of their later Saints.

• prestidigitation
• sleight of hand

• greenmailed