legerdemain

plural legerdemains

1. uncountableusuallySleight of hand; "magic" trickery.

   For he in slights and jugling feates did flow, / And of legierdemayne the mysteries did know.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

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   […] A deliberate man with infinite resources of patience, he was content to progress by easy stages toward the millennium. Some private legerdemain must have reconciled him to the "practical" methods that were employed. […]

   1959, Margaret Leech, “Champion of Protection”, in In the Days of McKinley, New York: Harper & Brothers, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 35–36

   Chief Justice Roberts does more or less the same thing in dissent: He practices intentions-and-expectations originalism while randomly sprinkling some public-meaning originalism fairy dust over his description of his enterprise, perhaps in the subconscious hope that no one will notice the legerdemain.

   2021 March 8, Michael C. Dorf, “Old-School Intentions-and-Expectations Originalism in the Nominal Damages Case”, in Dorf on Law

   Synonyms: prestidigitation, sleight of hand, conjuration, conjuring, dweomercraft, hocus-pocus, illusionism, jugglery

2. broadlyuncountableusuallyA show of skill or deceitful ability.

   Just for a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika’s skill, he supposed himself a victim of legerdemain.

   1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter II, in Zuleika Dobson

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   Certainly, that they are to this day so rife in Italy and Spain, and so scant in Britain, is a shrewd ground to apprehend Legerdemain, and forgery, in the accounts we get of their later Saints.

   1673, Gilbert Burnet, The mystery of iniquity unvailed, London, page 128

   Most of the time, no one really seems to notice that presentist legerdemain, perhaps because so few of us actually remember the experience of 2020 all that clearly and are clinging to hastily imposed narratives instead.

   2023 March 17, David Wallace-Wells, “America Has Decided It Went Overboard on Covid-19”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: jugglery, sleight of hand, deception, imposition, hype, deceit, dupery, fiddle