Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Crafty deception or trickery or an instance of it.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Activities intended to
deceive ; acon orhoax .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun verbal misrepresentation intended to take advantage of you in some way
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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More skullduggery from the folks that run the city.
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I have no firm evidence of McCain skullduggery, but I can see plenty of suspiciously fortuitous timing, squirming, squiggling, and on again off again events.
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Since pirates are infamous for their loyalty to no one, then some skullduggery is built into the nature of the movie.
Bloated “Pirates” three-quel the worst one yet » Scene-Stealers 2007
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No skullduggery is necessary for BHO to have a valid cert on file in HI that also indicating a foreign birth: there’s a Hawaiian law – on the books since 1982 – allowing those born outside HI to get valid HI certs.
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On some level, to greater or lesser degrees, patients are aware of this kind of skullduggery (and it is skullduggery).
Ghostwriting - Another Winning Strategy from Big Pharma's Playbook aka TBTAM 2007
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The board and donors, she says, have willfully overlooked the "skullduggery" that has beset the national office since Mr. Romero's installation as executive director in 2002.
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If Ned lost a few votes from voters who got the impression on the final day that he was up to some kind of skullduggery then maybe (maybe) Joe lost a few from losing his email contacts.
Midterm Roundup 2009
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They're all finagling, fighting and using whatever kind of skullduggery to get a chunk of and eventual control of the oil wealth.
Dem Senators Weigh In On Blair's Plan To Withdraw From Iraq 2009
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Let's see ... you got your "positive things" and you got your "negative things" ... but now someone has gone and craftily placed these two things side-by-side on a webpage, so obviously they must be engaging in some kind of skullduggery?
Obama Campaign Denies Collecting "Oppo Research" On Progressive Bloggers 2009
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Was this an unintentional screw up by a well-meaning Obama staffer trying to clean up a document so it was easier to see online or evidence of some kind of skullduggery?
Thomas Lipscomb: Why Running "On the Record" Is Harder Than You Think 2008
plethora commented on the word skullduggery
skullduggery vs skulduggery.
Discuss.
June 5, 2008
asativum commented on the word skullduggery
The latter is underhanded behavior. The former is underhanded behavior using defunct crania.
June 5, 2008
mollusque commented on the word skullduggery
Derived from sculduddery, which originally meant fornication or adultery (see World Wide Words). The spelling skullduggery is prevalent online, so this is a good example of spelling capture, influenced by skull, which isn't related.
June 5, 2008