prestidigitator
Americannoun
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prestidigitators
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Explanation
If you hire a professional prestidigitator for your little brother's birthday party, you'll get a performer who uses tricks and sleight-of-hand to entertain the crowd. The noun prestidigitator is just a fancy way of saying "magician." You might see a prestidigitator at a party or on a street corner, pulling quarters out of people's ears and turning rabbits into bouquets of flowers. The noun prestidigitation is another name for the quick hand movements and secret techniques of an illusionist. Both words come from the Latin word for "juggler," præstigiator.
Vocabulary lists containing prestidigitator
The Jungle
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Words with 15 or More Letters, List 5
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Magical Vocabulary
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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:
Perfect for the kitchen magician or dinner-party prestidigitator on your holiday gift list.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2024
Italo Calvino: I’d need a master metaphysician, storyteller and prestidigitator to make something glittering out of my mostly repetitive and rather beige existence.
From New York Times ● Nov. 19, 2020
After Seve Ballesteros chipped in at the second hole, Enberg said, ‘Ballesteros, the prestidigitator from Pedrena.’
From Golf Digest ● Dec. 22, 2017
In Merchants of Doubt, close-up prestidigitator extraordinaire Jamy Ian Swiss offers an answer: “Once revealed, never concealed.”
From Scientific American ● Mar. 10, 2015
After assuring himself that the coast was clear Sube drew back his sleeves in imitation of a prestidigitator.
From Sube Cane by Edward Bellamy Partridge
His new book, "How Magicians Think: Misdirection, Deception, and Why Magic Matters," isn't a how-to for aspiring prestidigitators.
From Salon ● Oct. 24, 2021
As a showman, Mr. Brown has none of the smarminess of Las Vegas prestidigitators or carnival hucksters.
From New York Times ● Sep. 15, 2019
These glitzy prestidigitators — not to be confused with the “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” crowd — have returned to Broadway with more patter, more magic, more questionable outfits.
From New York Times ● Nov. 22, 2018
The utterly unrestrained duping of investors, the smug complacency of the great financial prestidigitators are all shown.
From Time Magazine Archive
It may indeed be highly finished, the more highly in proportion to its brevity, but the clever word-juggling of such prestidigitators as Poe and Verlaine is perilous.
From A Study of Poetry by Bliss Perry
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.
