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:
The Italian, a teenager until late August, spent the closing laps watching Hamilton try to get close enough to pass Verstappen after the two had made contact at the first chicane at the restart.
From BBC ● Nov. 1, 2026
Hamilton held him off, but at the Turn Four/Five chicane Leclerc dived around the outside before taking to the grass, cut the corner and emerged in the lead.
From BBC ● Nov. 1, 2026
In the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix, he passed Christian Klien's Red Bull by cutting the chicane, let him by again on the straight and then passed him into Turn One.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
The Dutchman briefly took the lead from Russell on lap 11, before the Briton re-passed him three laps later, Antonelli overtaking the Red Bull into the second chicane.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026
Rodman’s methods were those of chicane, but rightly or wrongly he believed that he could read the human document.
From The Key to Yesterday by Charles Neville Buck
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
Chmielnicki, now doubly hateful to the Poles as being both a royalist and a Cossack, was again maltreated and chicaned, and only escaped from gaol by bribing his gaolers.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" by Various
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
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
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
The man who goes to law surrenders his liberty of action and becomes the sport of chicaning lawyers and hair-splitting judges.
From Mr. Fortescue An Andean Romance by William Westall
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
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