Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Trickery   Listen
noun
Trickery  n.  The art of dressing up; artifice; stratagem; fraud; imposture.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Trickery" Quotes from Famous Books



... fact the rider had not skirted Bourg, but had boldly entered the town. There, it seemed to Roland that the man had hesitated, unless this hesitation were a last ruse to hide his tracks. But after ten minutes spent in following his devious tracks Roland was sure of his facts; it was not trickery ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... both amusement and applause. To show how striking were its effects, and how surprising, even to scientific men, it may be mentioned that a certain learned SAVANT, on hearing it at a SEANCE of the Academie des Sciences, Paris, protested that it was a fraud, a piece of trickery or ventriloquism, and would not ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... why did she send the merchant?" The king, enraged, went into the harem. The queen saw from his countenance that the occurrence of the night before had become known to him, and she said: "Be it not that I see the king angry." He said: "How should I not be angry? Thou, by craft, and trickery, and intrigue, and plotting, hast brought thy desire from Rome—what wantonness is this that thou hast done?" Then he thought to slay her, but he forbore, because of his great love for her. But he ordered the chamberlain to carry the youth ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... But people had not the Bible then, and did not know as much as we know. It was not unnatural to think the gods would care a little for the poor people that lived on the earth. Besides, there was a good deal of management and trickery about the answers of the oracle, that helped ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... in his carriage. The condescension overpowered the good woman, who ordered it at once to be produced, and Sheridan drove home about the time that her husband was returning to Richmond, weary of waiting for his absent debtor. But this kind of trickery could not always succeed without some knowledge of his creditor's character. In the case of Holloway, the lawyer, Sheridan took advantage of his well-known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... then told Lord Grey he had settled it with Horne, but did not tell him what Horne required. The general movement was made, and when Horne desired to see Lord Grey he told him that his terms could not be complied with, so he became a victim to the trickery and shuffling of the Chancellor, who wanted to get him out, and did not care how. I hear that his colleagues are quite aware of all his tricks and his intrigues, and have not the slightest confidence in him. He thinks of nothing but the establishment ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... pleases because we fancy it to mean a hearth, a rustic meal, and a comfortable family. But that is all extraneous association. The most ordinary way in which utility affects us is negatively; if we know a thing to be useless and fictitious, the uncomfortable haunting sense of waste and trickery prevents all enjoyment, and therefore banishes beauty. But this is also an adventitious complication. The intrinsic value of a form is in ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... back to his office. "I don't wonder," he thought, as he stood looking at the ink-stains on his desk and floor, "that people think politics nothing but trickery and scoundrelism. Yet such vile weapons and slanders would not be used if there were not people vile and mean enough at heart to let such things influence them. The fault is not in politics. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... pleasure of the violin playing, which she adored. She had even hired for that purpose a violinist from the theatre. But when she cast a glance at me, she understood my feelings, and concealed her impression. Then began the mutual trickery and deceit. I smiled agreeably, pretending that all this pleased me extremely. He, looking at my wife, as all debauches look at beautiful women, with an air of being interested solely in the subject of conversation,—that is, in that which ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... abandon as gracefully as possible their previous intentions. In Germany the power of the Diet was not limited by the emperor, but by the local governments, though even so it was considerable. When a Diet, under skilful manipulation or by unscrupulous trickery, was induced by the executive to pass an unpopular measure, like the Edict of Worms, the law became a dead letter. In some other instances, notably in its long campaign against monopolies, even when it expressed the popular voice the Diet failed because the emperor ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... rate, the barter was not supposed to complete Jacob's title, as is shown by a subsequent piece of trickery. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... added the young man, decidedly. "I have my private opinion about the matter. I know enough about Checkynshaw to feel certain that he wouldn't let fifty thousand dollars slip through his fingers, if by any trickery he could hold on to it. If he has a daughter in France, fifteen years old, as she must be, wouldn't she write to him? Wouldn't he write to her? Wouldn't he go and see her? Wouldn't he send her money? She don't do it; he don't do it. I do all the post-office business for ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic

... the people to destruction, and only rescued the remnant that he might pose as their saviour and be saluted 'father' and 'patron.' There, indeed, was our Minucius at fault, as what honest, poor man is not, when confronted by the wiles of those bred to craft and trickery! See, too, how the consuls have followed the same dilatory measures, and can you doubt that it is all by agreement with these traitor nobles? Know well, now, that this war will have no ending until a man of the people ends it—a real plebeian; a new man. See you not ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... repeat, in connection with these startling performances, that those who speak of audible or visible signals, of telegraphy and wireless telegraphy, of expedients, trickery or deceit, are speaking of what they do not know and of what they have not seen? There is but one reply to be made to any one who honestly ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... now gathered their strength. They are moving forward in their might and power—and no force, no combination of forces, no trickery, deceit, or violence, can stop them now. They see before them the hope of the world—a decent, secure, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... down on his knee and holding her face against his own, whispered, "What care we for the old world? It is as sad and mad and bad as we are—if we only knew! And who knows how much worse? It has petty bickerings, damning lies of spite and malice, trickery and thievery and corruption on its conscience. Let the little people of the world prate of their little things! We are free, dearest—and we defy it, don't we? Our ideals are never lost. And ideals are the ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... heathen delusion, all the trickery and jugglery of the Devil, though she had failed to see through it, and had given herself up to it, heart and soul. Nay, worse! for after she had learnt that Gorgo was to represent Isis and she herself Nephthys, the sister of the divine pair, she had opposed the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... paper waxed ever greater. Banneker, with his swift appreciation of a hit, followed the lead with editorials; hired authors to write short stories glorifying the ennobled figure of the Salesman, his smartness, his strategy, his ruthless trickery, his success. And the salesmanhood of the nation, in trains, in hotel lobbies, at the breakfast table with its Patriot propped up flanking the egg and coffee, rose up to call him blessed and to add to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... which arises out of the consciousness of a secret wisdom, shadowy and indefinite in the highest degree, perilously apt to sound like nonsense if cramped by a definite utterance, but yet casting over the whole picture a kind of magical colouring, which may be mere trickery or may be a genuine illumination, but which, whilst we are not too exacting, brings out pleasant and perplexing effects. The lights and shadows fluctuate, and solid forms melt provokingly into mist; ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... to his opponents, persevering, industrious in research, never losing sight of the principal point under discussion, aptly illustrating by his stories which were always brought into good effect. He was free from political trickery or denunciation of the personal character of his opponents. In debate he was firm and collected. 'With malice toward none, with charity for all,' he won the confidence of the public, even ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... instead of leading a holy life, men were taught that their souls might be saved through masses said for them, at a money rate, by priests whose licentiousness disgraced the nation which endured it; a system in which, amidst all the trickery of the pardons, pilgrimages, indulgences,—double-faced as these inventions are—wearing one meaning in the apologies of theologians, and quite another to the multitude who live and suffer under their influence—one ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... incalculable harm by your criminal acts," he said sternly. "But for your lying and trickery Jimmie Turnbull would be alive to-day. I trust the Court will ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... will; the prediction will fulfill itself. Thomas is superstitious beyond all reasonableness; and good Mistress Ann, my pious sister-in-law, is almost as bad as he is, notwithstanding her lies and trickery. Do you know what I saw ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws; mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and receive two cannon balls from Edward Everett," etc. "Four fifths of his sickness is trickery, and the ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... that I sought Senor Ulloa. Did I not tell you that I had a letter for him? If you were a caballero instead of a wretched posadero, I would chastise your trickery as it deserves. What has become of Senor Ulloa, and how comes it that ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... to know that he was alive; but then he groaned aloud, and he saw the old man stand beside him with a very terrible look upon his face, holding out his hand for the stone in silence; so Gilbert gave him back the stone, and then with a fierce anger said, "Why have you shown me this? for this is the trickery of hell." And the old man looked at him very sternly and said, "Why then did you come to this place? You were not called hither, and they that pry must be punished. A man who pulls open the door which ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on silver dollars. Now we've got to get hold of one of those dollars. That might not be a difficult task in itself. We could hold up the grocer's boy and take the dollar away from him, or we might get it away from him by trickery and substitute another dollar for the stolen one. We might even be able to pick the grocer's pocket and give him a substitute coin. But neither plan would help us because the trick would soon be discovered and the spies would know that they are suspected. It wouldn't do us any good to get ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... he said at length, "have been of evil men and trickery and ambition. I realize that, always, when I come here—when I see you, Alice Windham. For a little time I am uplifted. Then I go back to my devious toiling ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... human Consciousnesses or Sub-Consciousnesses present. But the conclusion of the whole matter seems to be this: there is a germ of scientific truth which the professional spiritualists doctor and wrap round with complex trickery in order to extract backsheesh from poor old women of both sexes anxious for information about deceased relatives. Circles are formed with pretentious mysticism, and no self-respecting "spirit" will appear without being received in state with extinguished ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... Secession flag paraded on the desk of an editor of one of the above-mentioned publications,] we must still protest against any other than definite charges, even against men whose daily deeds and utterances of treason have been of more real service to the South than all the trash and trickery of Quack Bickley himself. It is indeed charged that 'these are the principal names on the lists of traveling messengers for those States,' but it should be remembered that such accusation requires clear proof. With this single exception, we commend the pamphlet in question ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... him, when all the numerous officials, both civil and military, protested against his aggression by resigning their offices. It is bad enough when men in authority play fantastic tricks. When the play is badly played, the trickery becomes ridiculous. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... him: "This revolt against ideas is carried so far that able men have come seriously to look upon progress as a matter for the manipulation of wire-pullers, something to be 'jobbed' in committee by sophistical notions or other clever trickery." Lincoln Steffens calls these people "our damned rascals." Mr. Hobson continues, "The attraction of some obvious gain, the suppression of some scandalous abuse of monopolist power by a private ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Those familiar with the Navaho admire their energy, industry, independence, and cheerful disposition, and their ability to attack the problems of life in a way that no other wandering tribe has exercised. On the other hand, cunning and trickery are among their characteristics, and they are expert horse-thieves. With the Indian, as well as with civilized man, honesty may be interpreted in various ways. If one should leave his camp equipage unprotected in a tent, it would be entirely safe from all except the renegade, already ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... time, he hardly realized that his ill-gotten property, now increased to twelve acres or more, was itself a very shaky bit of real estate. In fact, it was not real at all. His wife one day told him so, for she knew of her mean husband's trickery. ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... mischievous humour, for it was Davies who had asked me out—though now he scarcely seemed to need me—almost tricked me into coming out, for he might have known I was not suited to such a life; yet trickery and Davies sounded an ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... the result of our own reflections they saw inspiration; where we say desires, instincts, passions, they said temptation, but we must not permit these differences of language to make us overlook or tax with trickery a part of their spiritual life, bringing us thus to the conclusions of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... was foredoomed—foredoomed not only by justice but also by trickery and guile—and was being driven slowly but surely towards the judicial shambles. For what had he succeeded in adducing in his behalf? Nothing but the purely apocryphal speculation that the dead barber might have threatened ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... and, weary of his vain search, prepared at last to occupy a comfortable couch in one of the chambers. To his utter amazement, however, the bed retreated as he advanced, until, impatient at this trickery, he sprang boldly upon it. A moment later a rain of sharp spears and daggers fell upon his couch, but did him no harm, for he had not removed his heavy armor. When the rain of weapons was over, a gigantic peasant, armed with a huge club, stalked ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... must set the craft simple problems; it must not set tasks that can only be accomplished by trickery or by great effort, disproportioned to the importance of the result. But, indeed, you will naturally get the habit of working according to this rule, and other reasonable rules, if you yourself work at ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... accustomed as he was to startling events and underhand trickery, he could find no words to express ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... war to the death," he said to himself, as he tossed in his bed,—"a war of savages, skulking in ambush, of trickery and treachery, declared in the name of Madame Jules. What sort of man is this to whom she belongs? What species of power ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... amusing scene between Sir Samuel Hood, then commander-in-chief in India, and the newly-promoted boatswain of a sloop-of-war belonging to the squadron. The Admiral, who was one of the bravest, and kindest, and truest-hearted seamen that ever trod a ship's decks, was a sworn foe to all trickery in dress. The eye of the veteran officer was directed earnestly towards the yeast of waves, which in immense double rows of surf, fringe and guard the whole of that flat coast. He was watching the progress of a Massullah boat, alternately ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... said here that the speech coming from within is extremely indicative of a real transferred or hypnotic speech, and its coming from within facilitates surprise where it is used fraudulently or criminally. A certain amount of collateral trickery would enhance this. It is easily confounded ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... ravenous for Peace; has been privately taking the most unheard-of steps:—wrote to Kaunitz, "Peace at once and we will vote for your HAVING Silesia;" to which Kaunitz, suspecting trickery in artless Bute, answered, haughtily sneering, "No help needed from your Lordship in that matter!" After which repulse, or before it, Bute had applied to the Czar's Minister in London: "Czarish Majesty to have East ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the jury would never have understood it.) I had, therefore, a double danger to guard against; first that which came from the conspirators—the fear that they should discover I was tricking them, or rather that I had discovered their trickery; and, on the other side, that I should become involved with them in the fall that was so certain from the beginning, and be myself accused of conspiracy—or of misprision of treason at the least. Against the latter I guarded as well as I could, by revealing to Mr. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... had no practice in trickery and, feeling themselves in the wrong, took up such ridiculous and uncomfortable attitudes that the Fairy, the moment she ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... Yankee trickery, The Yankee gibe and sneer, Till Yankee insolence and pride Know neither shame nor fear; But ready now with shot and steel Their brazen front to mar, We hoist aloft the Bonnie Blue Flag ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... (whom I now believed had somehow contrived to steal the jewel) to account for the commonplace words it would have been difficult to erase. Had I laughed, however, my laughter would have been bitter indeed, ending in an even increased desire to save from him and his trickery the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... proponents of all seven approaches to social problems and social change employ a wide range of techniques from persuasion to coercion. To support their projects they advance logical arguments, elaborate half-truths, make emotional appeal; employ trickery, deceit, preferment, privilege, flattery, soft living, bribery, coercion, physical and social ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... indicate the names of the gods and their functions, lest one imagine that with pantheism the Vedic religion expired. Even that old, impious Brahmanic fable crops out again: "The devils were the older brothers of the gods, and were conquered by the gods only with trickery" (in. 33. 60), an interesting reminiscence of the fact that the later name for evil spirit was originally the one applied to the great and good spirit (Asura the same with Ahura).[17] According to a rather late chapter in the second book each of the great Vedic gods has a special paradise of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... because a liberal buyer, who is well known, approaches the counter. Goods must not be misrepresented. Customers buy upon the understanding that they can get their money back without argument, therefore only true representation must be made. Exaggerated statements, or trickery in selling goods, is not permitted. In all matters relating to the business of the house the greatest courtesy is required. Clerks are expected to accommodate themselves, as far as possible, to the peculiarities of those they are serving, ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips

... Post, in skilful concealment as at Modder River, when all day long most of our men were quite unable to discover on which side of the stream the Boer entrenchments were, and in what they called clever trickery, but we called treachery, they are absolutely unsurpassable. So was it through the earlier stages of the campaign. So was ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... suspicion that some French trickery was concerned, induced me to challenge it in French; so, without advancing a step, I halloed ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... indeed, recognised each other in that brief meeting of our eyes. Some kind of challenge had passed between us. I had dared her to drop that disguise of trickery and show herself as she was; and her response had been an admission that she acknowledged not me, but my ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... cruel deception crept into his consciousness. He was chilled for several seconds. Grief at his lost love, implacable anger at her trickery, crowded into his unhappy brain. But he only bowed to Cilli, and summoning all ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... no learned profession being available, the underbailiffs, undersheriffs, clerks and other underlings of the administration of justice began to practice, without real knowledge. Greedy and lacking in principle, they developed trickery and stirred up litigation for their own profit, just as their predecessors had done three hundred years before in England. Colonial statutes were then passed, forbidding such underlings of the court to practice law at all. But lawyers were not popular in colonial ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... who are content with surface facts, or who lack understanding of popular currents, either state, or leave the inference, that it was solely by bribing and trickery that Gould was able to consummate his frauds. Such assertions are altogether incorrect. To do what he did required the support, or at least tolerance, of a considerable section of public opinion. This he obtained. And how? By posing as ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... much to concern everyone there, in any degree that can be put upon us as interested spectators. For myself, I care nothing for the gift of interpretation, and far less for that dreadful type of effete facility which produces a kind of hocus-pocus technical brilliancy which fuddles the eye with a trickery, and produces upon the untrained and uncritical mind a kind of unintelligent hypnotism. Art these days is a matter of scientific comprehension of reality, not a trick of the hand or the old-fashioned ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but when it came to the intellectuals—when it came to delicate chicane, and scheming, and trickery—he couldn't see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... and there were but few courses in the South that had not tested the mettle of his stock. But like his brother in arms, Colonel Cash, of the Eighth, and brother turfman, he became disgusted with the thievery and trickery of later day sports and quit the turf, still owning at his death some of the most noted racers of the times, Granger Lynchburg, John Payne, Glengary, Father Ryan, Ned Brace, and others ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... a very busy life to devote attention to this subject. I had experience of one series of seances with very amazing results, including several materializations seen in dim light. As the medium was detected in trickery shortly afterwards I wiped these off entirely as evidence. At the same time I think that the presumption is very clear, that in the case of some mediums like Eusapia Palladino they may be guilty of trickery when their powers fail them, and ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle

... or the enthusiasm of numbers, in simple faith, into the highways and hedges we sent the Gospel of Freedom, and as of old, the people heard with gladness. A very large majority of our petitioners are from the unlettered masses. They who, knowing naught of the machinery of government or the trickery of politics, believe that, as God reigns, there is justice on the earth. As yet, none of our large cities have been thoroughly canvassed; but from the savannahs of the South and the prairies of the West—from the hills of New England and the shores of our lakes ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... The lively trickery of the Italian masks has always found a more unfavourable reception in England than in France. The fool or clown in Shakspeare's comedies is far more of an ironical humorist than a mimical buffoon. Intrigue in real life is foreign to the Northern nations, both from ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... other vegetable, and gravy. It sounded so extraordinarily luxurious and appetising as to provoke incredulity and caustic comment. Those who, like myself, had suffered internment in other camps and who had become thoroughly grounded in Teuton shiftiness and trickery divined that something unusually ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... love-story with a logical ending. Which means that in the last paragraph no one has any one else in his arms. Since logic and love have long been at loggerheads, the story may end badly. Still, what love passages there are shall be left intact. There shall be no trickery. There shall be no running breathless, flushed, eager-eyed, to the very gateway of Love's garden, only to bump one's nose against that baffling, impregnable, stone-wall phrase of "let us draw a veil, dear reader." This is the story ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... of trickery? Ye told her the facts of my parole; therefore ye owe it to me, even though it may not serve your own suit, to tell her as well what ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... at the corner of Palace Square nearest the river. He was not in the least the kind of young man who appraises passing women, very far from a starer. At the instant their eyes met, his thoughts had been occupied with work matters and the trickery of events. In fact, there was so much to do that he resented the intrusion, found himself hoping in the first flash that she would show some ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... their foes at home. But now a king had arisen of wider views and larger mould. Philip had spent his youth in Thebes, where he had learned the art of war under Epaminondas. On coming to the throne he quickly proved himself a great soldier and a keen and cunning politician. By dint of war and trickery he rapidly spread his dominions until all his home foes were subdued, Macedonia was greatly extended, and Thessaly, the most northern ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... he appears in human shape, majestic in stature and wondrous in endowment, a mighty magician, a destroyer of serpents and evil manitous; sometimes he is a vain and treacherous imp, full of childish whims and petty trickery, the butt and victim of men, beasts, and spirits. His powers of transformation are without limit; his curiosity and malice are insatiable; and of the numberless legends of which he is the hero, the greater part ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... hollowed out beneath the altar, where it served as a hiding-place for the priests,—at least so say the romance-writers. Unfortunately for this idea, the doorway of the recess stood forth and still stands forth to the gaze, rendering the alleged trickery impossible. ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... quick retort. "Such men as you are a pest. Like any wild beast you will strive to save your miserable life! But, thank Heaven, you must depend upon your claws. Lying and trickery will avail ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... must have needed no less constant reparation than the exterior of a Gothic cathedral. The sham jewellery frequently found in Greek tombs, and the curious mixture of marble with sandstone in the sculptures from Selinus, are other instances that Greeks no less than modern artists condescended to trickery for the sake of effect. In the series of the metopes from Selinus now preserved in the museum at Palermo, the flesh of the female persons is represented by white marble, while that of the men, together with the dresses and other accessories, is wrought of common ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the nation: the inevitable period of moral retrogression and political trickery that ever follows in the wake of war overtook us. So flagrant became the political scandals that reputable men began to leave politics alone, and politics consequently became disreputable. Men began to pride themselves on having nothing to do with their own government, and to agree ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... this freedom be on the lookout for betrayal and trickery. The fraternization which is developing on the front can easily turn ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... said, "I should have suspected you sooner, but it did not occur to me that human nature could be so vile. To undertake such risks and to use so much trickery and guile there must be a powerful motive, and in your case I can't guess it. Now, Weber, why did ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... unconscious of the curious eyes that followed her. She passed close by the corpse. She looked down at the ghastly face and twisted body without the slightest trace of emotion,—neither dread nor repugnance nor interest beyond a curious narrowing of the eyes as of one searching for some sign of trickery on the part of a wily adversary. On the way out she stopped to pick up a wretched, almost toothless comb ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... welcomed, the King lodged till near the day of rendezvousing. We will leave him there, and look westward a little; before going farther into the Moravian Expedition. Friedrich himself is evidently much bent on this Expedition; has set his heart on paying the Austrians for their trickery at Klein-Schnellendorf, in this handsome way, and still picking up the chance against them which Karl Albert squandered. If only the French and Saxons would go well abreast with Friedrich, and thrust home! But will they? Here is a surprising bit of news; not of good omen, when ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... bill for that, to some slight extent," was his dry rejoinder. "But for my 'trickery,' your half-brother would be dead, by now. As for 'ingratitude,' how about the trick he served me, today? Even if he didn't know Hade had smuggled across a bagful of his pet moccasins to Roke, yet he let me ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... "Pathfinder" was hauled up on the float she was found to be free from any evidences of trickery. ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock

... object can anyone have in scaring me to death? Besides, there is no one in the room, that I can swear. My outer door is locked, Lady Studley's outer door is locked. It is impossible that there can be any trickery ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... case is coming on, great pains will often be taken by the prisoner's counsel to ascertain the characteristics and disposition toward his client of each of the jurors who have been summoned to court. This has sometimes been carried to the extent of trickery, particularly in some of the Southern States. Agents have been sent over the county to see every man capable of jury service. There is some ostensible reason given for the call. He is perhaps asked to buy a photograph of the accused; ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... the vows of his Baptism both to speak and act the truth. Well says a preacher of our day, "we have dethroned the Most High in the realm of commerce, and in the place of the Heavenly Majesty have erected unclean and pestiferous idols; we have put into the holy place the foul little gods, named Trickery and Cunning. We have tried to lock God up in the Church, and have shut upon Him the iron gates ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... tempers. 'I would add a touch of earthquake, Miss Ilchester, just to make sure that all the party know one another's edges before starting.' This was too far a shot of nonsense for Janet, whose native disposition was to refer to lunacy or stupidity, or trickery, whatsoever was novel to her understanding. 'I, for my part,' said he, 'stipulate to have for comrade no man who fancies himself a born and stamped chieftain, no inveterate student of maps, and no dog ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... policy as this, limited, practical, tentative as it always was, had little of grandeur and originality about it; it was apt indeed to degenerate into mere trickery and finesse. But it was a policy suited to the England of her day, to its small resources and the transitional character of its religious and political belief, and it was eminently suited to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail, and in details her wonderful readiness ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... contest pictured by George Eliot in 'Felix Holt'—that which leads to the riot in which Felix becomes unintentionally and unfortunately embroiled? 'The nomination day,' says the novelist, 'was a great epoch of successful trickery, or, to speak in a more parliamentary manner, of war-stratagem, on the part of skilful agents.' And she goes ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... the man, so easily scared at the very shadow of trickery, who is so flippantly pronounced to be ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... steamboats, and cars. I have heard men openly boast, before a miscellaneous company, of acts of dishonesty which in England would have procured transportation for them. Mammon is the idol which the people worship; the one desire is the acquisition of money; the most nefarious trickery and bold dishonesty are invested with a spurious dignity if they act as aids to the attainment of this object. Children from their earliest years imbibe the idea that sin is ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... or other conspicuous positions, their virtues and attainments distinguishing them above their fellow-men of the country. Throughout the State, to such men there was great deference, and the instances were rare where it was not deserved. The discipline and trickery of party was unknown, nor was it possible that these could exist among a people who, universally, honestly desired and labored to be represented by their best men. To attain to the high position of senator or representative in Congress ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... of the world suspected the United States of bad faith and trickery. They were not certain. But there were ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... sharking traps will always be set, and will always catch silly people, as long as there are any to catch. The only means of stopping such trickery is to diffuse the conviction that the best way to get a living is, to go to work like a man and ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... first two or three times I saw this weird and fantastic ceremony, I thought the apparitions were the result of mere trickery. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... graciousness, it revealed several places on the frame of the mirror over the mantel, where the gold had fallen away and had been replaced by an inferior sort of gilding. By some subtle trickery with the lace curtain that hung at the open window, it laid an arabesque of delicate shadow upon the polished floor. In the room beyond, where Madame's crystal ball lay on the mahogany table, with a bit ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... ridicules good manners, whose whole aim, in short, is to provoke guffaws of laughter at the expense of someone's hurt body or spirit. There will be collections of folk and fairy tales, raked together without discrimination from the literature of people among whom trickery and cunning are the most admired qualities; there will be school stories in which the masters and studious boys grovel at the feet of the football hero; in greater number than the above will be the stories written in series on thoroughly ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... better type was brought into American politics by the Civil War. Notwithstanding the bad manners and excesses of ante-bellum politics, the leaders had been men of defined policy, only occasionally reaching high office through trickery or personal appeal. Now came the presence of an intense issue which smoothed out other differences, magnified a single policy,—the saving of the Union,—and gave opportunity to a new type of intense, patriotic, narrow mind. Men of this type dominated in ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... affectionate attentions with which he envelops her—nothing of all that existed in Jupillon's case. Woman was to him simply an obscene image; and a passion for a woman seemed to him desirable as being prohibited, illicit, vulgar, cynical and amusing—an excellent opportunity for trickery and sarcasm. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... down one of those who tried to detain her. This experiment, thrice renewed, succeeded thrice, and belief seemed about to return to the assembly, when a physician of Saumur named Duncan, suspecting trickery, entered the choir, and, ordering the six men to retire, said he was going to try and hold the superior down unaided, and if she escaped from his hands he would make a public apology for his unbelief. M. de Laubardemont tried to prevent this test, by objecting to Duncan ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... told me,' saith one, 'that so and so does not intend leaving a single farthing to his wife, and that there is no love lost between them.' Others further disgrace me and call me a crow: 'a crow tell me there is some trickery going on,' they say. Yea, some call me by a more honoured name—Old Man, and yet not a half of the omens, prophecies, and cures attributed to me are really mine. I never counselled walking the old way if the new were better, and I never intended ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... rebuked and done again is worse than before. Trafficking in things pertaining to the altar is even more likely than other trading to cross the not always very well defined line which separates trade from trickery and commerce from theft. That lesson needs to be laid to heart in many quarters now. There is always a fringe of moneyed interests round Christ's Church, seeking gain out of religious institutions; and their stands have a wonderful tendency ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... times as these every lover of liberty should go armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by trickery Louisianians had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of parvenues, to be dragged before juries for asserting the human right of free trade or ridding the earth of sneaks in the pay of the government; that laws, so-called, had been forged into thumbscrews, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... oaths, Hellene, to men of trade and barter, to men of trickery and guile. The Aryan noble is taught three things: to fear the king, to bend the bow, to speak the truth. And he learns all well. I have spoken,—my word ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... restraints of public morality are not always recognized. What would be called theft or robbery at home is called a successful raid or conquest if directed against distant villages; and what would be falsehood or trickery in private life is honored by the name of policy and diplomacy if successful against strangers. On the other hand, the rules of hospitality applied only to people of other villages, and a man of the same village could never claim the right of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... Mr. Calvert never forgot the fascination, the open frankness of Monsieur de Talleyrand's manner on that occasion, nor the look of sadness and suffering in his eyes. When he heard him in after years accused of shameless veniality, of trickery, lying, duplicity, even murder, he always remembered that impulsive revelation—never repeated—of a warped, unhappy ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... and naturally did all he could to develop his intelligence and bring out all of his latent sagacity. While in a measure they succeeded in this, they also found, in some instances, that in some dogs downright mischief and trickery could be about as easily developed ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... the personal destruction the day's calamity brought him was the knowledge of the entire faith these men had placed in him, and the losses which his own mistaken security had caused them. Granted he could neither guess nor avert the trickery which had brought about his failure; but none the less did he feel that he had failed them; none the less did the very generosity and magnanimity they showed him sting ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... that act illegal, and treated it as null and void; they insisted on their own authority in entertaining appeals against ecclesiastical abuses; they eagerly supported anyone who showed a disposition to withstand the pretensions of Rome in the matter of patronage. The King, smarting under the trickery of the Pope, made no attempt to restrain them in this line of conduct; and the result was that the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction was never fully executed, having never been legalized by the forms of the constitution. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... whole business of persuading the public that the improbable is probable. Every work of art is and must be crammed with improbabilities and artifice; and the greater portion of the artifice is employed in just this trickery of persuasion. Only, the public of the dramatist needs far less persuading than the public of the novelist. The novelist announces that Millicent accepted the hand of the wrong man, and in spite of all the novelist's corroborative and exegetical detail the insulted ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... of Scot's home and opened his eyes to the possibility of humbug. In the very same year two pretenders, Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder, were convicted in London. By vomiting pins and straws[8] they had convinced many that they were bewitched, but the trickery was soon found out and they were compelled to do public penance at St. Paul's.[9] We are not told what was the fate of a detestable Mother Baker, who, when consulted by the parents of a sick girl at New Romney in Kent, accused a ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... steadying influence is marriage on a sailing man. It keeps you from spending your money in foreign ports, where you only buy trickery for your silver. And when you have a wife at home, you'll have little truck with fancy women, who have husbands behind the screen, sometimes, and them with knives.... So I've heard tell.... Or maybe get an evil sickness. Listen to an old woman ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... your protests are useless," Dan interrupted. "I know of the conspiracy in which you are engaged, of your deceit and trickery here, of your part in my poor sister's disappearance. You know that Madame de la Fontaine has told me much. Do you expect me to meet you ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold



Words linked to "Trickery" :   dupery, hanky panky, shenanigan, jugglery, hoax, slickness, hocus-pocus, chicanery, deception, misrepresentation, humbug, chicane, trick, skulduggery, wile, guile, deceit



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com