legerdemain
nounEtymology
From Middle English legerdemeyn, lechardemane, from Old French léger 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 Old French phrase is archaic but still sometimes found in older literature and simply means “skillful” without any connotation of sleight of hand.
- derived from léger de main
- inherited from legerdemeyn
Definitions
Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.
- For he in slights and jugling feates did flow, / And of legierdemayne the mysteries did know.
- […] A deliberate man with infinite resources of patience, he was content to progress by easy stages toward the millennium. Some private legerdemain must have reconciled him to the "practical" methods that were employed. […]
A show of skill or deceitful ability.
- 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.
- Most of the time, no one really seems to notice that presentist legerdemain, perhaps because so few of us actually remember the experience of 2020 all that clearly and are clinging to hastily imposed narratives instead.
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for legerdemain. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA