noun
Synonym Usage
See duplicity.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of trickery
Explanation
When tricks of any kind are used to fool or deceive someone, especially for financial gain, that's trickery. If you suspect that a cute kid has scammed you out of twenty dollars, you have every right to accuse him of trickery. Trickery is using pretense or sleight of hand or fast talking to cheat a person out of some amount of money, the way a card sharp or a con man might do. The earliest use of trick was in this negative sense — a mean ruse or cheat. Trickery simply adds the Middle English ery to the end to form a new noun.
Vocabulary lists containing trickery
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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:
Apple—in its very Apple way—has also come up with some hardware and software trickery to make up for some shortcomings of the basic design.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
His trickery and creativity was on display throughout against Fulham, along with an impressive work-rate.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2026
He appears to have dedicated much of his time there to putting out videos and written posts about demons and their trickery.
From Slate ● Jun. 8, 2026
Neymar brought profile and panache to Paris but could not deliver the holy grail of European success, Denilson's trickery failed to help Real Betis beat the drop, a car crash curtailed Gigi Lentini's buccaneering brilliance.
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2026
I am only better than him through trickery and he meant me no harm.
From "The Old Man and The Sea" by Ernest Hemingway
But trickeries of some sort existed on all the popular TV quizzes, not just Twenty-One.
From Time Magazine Archive
But—for the time, at least—these things were no more than mere trickeries of self-torment for Paul's mind, and he was on fire to meet the mid-day.
From Despair's Last Journey by David Christie Murray
The trickeries of the hustings were distasteful to him.
From The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation Volume 1 by Charles Roger
From the first he eschewed the facile trickeries and ostentations which allure the populace.
From Tales of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett
With every year of her growth this principle of attention to outside trickeries and fineries is more rigidly pursued.
From Modern Women and What is Said of Them A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) by Lucia Gilbert Calhoun
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.
