chicane
Americannoun
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a bridge or whist hand without trumps
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motor racing a short section of sharp narrow bends formed by barriers placed on a motor-racing circuit to provide an additional test of driving skill
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a less common word for chicanery
verb
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(tr) to deceive or trick by chicanery
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(tr) to quibble about; cavil over
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(intr) to use tricks or chicanery
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of chicane
1665–75; < French chicane (noun), chicaner (v.), perhaps < Middle Low German schikken to arrange
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
An error by Hamilton through Turn 10 later around the lap gave Norris a run out of the corner, and he drove past the Ferrari on the outside line into the chicane that followed.
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
Antonelli came back at him on the outside into the chicane and was slightly ahead as they turned in, but he had to take to the run-off area.
From BBC ● May 24, 2026
Four laps later, Russell again ran deep into the hairpin and they went side by side into the final chicane, only for Russell to hold on again.
From BBC ● May 24, 2026
But he did what he was told, before trying again at the chicane, only for Russell to hold him off.
From BBC ● May 24, 2026
By legal chicane, the chicane of an alien law, many an Irish Naboth may have been dispossessed.
From Irish History and the Irish Question by Goldwin Smith
Carole Lombard, a $20,000,000 American in Cuba, is sorry Dancer George Raft was chicaned by a counterfeit lottery ticket bearing the same number as her genuine winning ticket.
From Time Magazine Archive
The very possibility of public agency, by which such petitions could authentically arrive at Parliament, has been evaded and chicaned away.
From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
All saw, and too clearly, that we had been chicaned; and that the wretched curs who had “sold” us, were as completely beyond our reach, as if twenty miles lay between us and them!
From The Bandolero A Marriage among the Mountains by Mayne Reid
I had heard enough to tell me I had been chicaned.
From The Bandolero A Marriage among the Mountains by Mayne Reid
He had tried his best to get rid of them, advanced the rent, implored, chicaned, but all in vain.
From The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II by Jules Lermina
The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy or the path of little chicaning bargain-making.
From Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) Authors and Journalists by Asa Don Dickinson
A Judge that goes upon chicaning is to be punished more severely than a highway Robber.
From History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21 by Thomas Carlyle
But the poor girl had no thought of so chicaning away life; her mind was fixed on far other subjects.
From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 by Rossiter Johnson
The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-making.
From The Letters of Robert Burns by Robert Burns
Whereby come Dissident ejected Priests; unconquerable Martyrs according to some, incurable chicaning Traitors according to others.
From The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
