CHICANERY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does chicanery mean? 

• CHICANERY (noun)
  The noun CHICANERY has 1 sense:

1. the use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them)

  Familiarity information: CHICANERY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHICANERY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

chicane; chicanery; guile; shenanigan; trickery; wile

Hypernyms ("chicanery" is a kind of...):

deceit; deception; dissembling; dissimulation (the act of deceiving)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "chicanery"):

dupery; fraud; fraudulence; hoax; humbug; put-on (something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage)

jugglery (artful trickery designed to achieve an end)

Derivation:

chicane (defeat someone through trickery or deceit)

 Context examples 

That these meshes; beginning with alarming and falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the receiver, at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and ill-judged speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he was morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from—HEEP—and by—HEEP—fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W. himself, on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated by a miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries—gradually thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world beyond.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)