sleight

American  

[slahyt] / slaɪt /

noun

sleights plural

1. skill; dexterity.

2. an artifice; stratagem.

3. cunning; craft.

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sleight British  

/ slaɪt /

noun

1. skill; dexterity See also sleight of hand

2. a trick or stratagem

3. cunning; trickery

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Usage

What does sleight mean? Sleight means skill, especially with one’s hands (dexterity). It can also mean trickery or cunning, or a specific trick or scheme. Sleight is by far most commonly used in the phrase sleight of hand, whose meanings are very similar to those of sleight: manual dexterity, general trickery, or a trick performed with quick and skillful hand movements. Sleight and sleight of hand are especially associated with coin and card tricks that require such hand movements. They’re also associated with deceptive ways of stealing, such as pickpocketing. Sleight should not be confused with the word slight, which has the same pronunciation. As an adjective, slight means small or insignificant. As a noun, it commonly means the act of treating someone with indifference or snubbing them. Example: The illusionist spent years perfecting his sleight so that it was undetectable even at close range.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• sleights
  plural

Etymology

Origin of sleight

1225–75; Middle English; early Middle English slēgth < Old Norse slǣgth. See sly, -th ¹

Explanation

The noun sleight refers to being able to use your hands with ease, especially when doing a trick. Sleight is often used in the phrase "sleight of hand." If you are a good magician, you can make a coin disappear with sleight of hand. The noun sleight refers to cunning or cleverness, especially when used to trick or deceive. You can use a sleight of mind to trick yourself into believing that if you eat a box of cookies at dinnertime, it counts as dinner. The word sleight has a long history and comes from the Middle English word sleghth, which also meant "cunning." Back then, people would have pronounced the "gh" — even though today we don't.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sleight sleights

The author also explores the sleight of intellect practiced by Jefferson, a slave owner who deplored slavery and used his rhetorical skills to cast the cause of states’ rights as a question of liberty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

This sleight of hand directly undermines the intended safeguards in federal law.

From MarketWatch ● Feb. 12, 2026

The duo recently joined “AGT” champion magician Shin Lim in his Las Vegas residency with an act that merged their mental magic with Lim’s sleight of hand.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2025

But, as Kagan exposed, this was a rhetorical sleight of hand.

From Slate ● May 15, 2025

He’d never lost his love for sleight of hand, and he graduated from palming coins to cards, cups, wallets, and watches.

From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo

That’s what Thompson is offering on “Never Be the Same”: no magic tricks or sleights of hand, but songs that listeners will feel and live.

From Salon ● May 15, 2026

Confronted with the rules of fair play, the reader was enjoined to solve the case alongside the detective, which required seeing through the author’s sleights of hand.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026

The building also bears some of the visual sleights of hand borrowed from the industry that helped build it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 12, 2022

Ostensibly recounted with nothing but clinical curiosity, the transgressive patient’s evasions, provocations and sleights of hand are in this way craftily enacted by the novel itself.

From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2021

I watched as he demonstrated tricks and sleights of hand he learned from Yorick, but I never dared to speak to him.

From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein