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chicane

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To resort to tricks or subterfuges; use chicanery.
  • intransitive verb To trick; deceive.
  • noun Chicanery.
  • noun Games A bridge or whist hand without trumps.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A quibble: as, a chicane about words.
  • noun In bridge whist, a hand which is void of trumps; it entitles the holder to score simple honors. When the hands of two partners are both void of trumps it is called double chicane.
  • To use chicane; employ shifts, tricks, or artifices.
  • To treat with chicane; deceive; cheat; bamboozle.
  • noun The art of gaining an advantage by the use of evasive stratagems or petty or unfair tricks and artifices; trickery; sophistry; chicanery.
  • noun A game similar to pall-mall, played on foot, in Languedoc and elsewhere, with a long-handled mallet and a ball of hard wood. It is played in an open field, like polo.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The use of artful subterfuge, designed to draw away attention from the merits of a case or question; -- specifically applied to legal proceedings; trickery; chicanery; caviling; sophistry.
  • noun (Card playing) In bridge, the holding of a hand without trumps, or the hand itself. It counts as simple honors.
  • intransitive verb To use shifts, cavils, or artifices.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun road transport A temporary barrier, or serpentine curve, on a vehicular path, especially one designed to reduce speed.
  • noun Chicanery.
  • verb intransitive To use chicanery, tricks or subterfuge.
  • verb transitive To deceive.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb raise trivial objections
  • noun a bridge hand that is void of trumps
  • noun the use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them)
  • noun a movable barrier used in motor racing; sometimes placed before a dangerous corner to reduce speed as cars pass in single file
  • verb defeat someone through trickery or deceit

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French chicaner, from Old French, to quibble.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • knitandpurl commented on the word chicane

    "20's Plenty, which King runs without pay, while managing his own small I.T. company, makes the case that restrained, good-natured driving in residential areas—tootling—is best achieved not by the fussy, expensive apparatus of speed bumps, chicanes, and school zones, but, rather, by area-wide speed limits of twenty miles per hour, such as were recently introduced in Portsmouth and several other British cities, thanks in part to King's activities."

    "Tootling" by Ian Parker, in The New Yorker, December 6, 2010, p 31

    December 12, 2010

  • qms commented on the word chicane

    He's running a brilliant campaign:

    He masters the art of chicane;

    He believes what you please

    And lies with great ease.

    Who knows what heights he'll attain?

    November 6, 2015