Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who operates a thimblerig.
- transitive verb To swindle with or as if with a thimblerig.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To cheat by means of thimblerig, or sleight of hand.
- noun A sleight-of-hand trick played with three small cups shaped like thimbles, and a small ball or pea.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To swindle by means of small cups or thimbles, and a pea or small ball placed under one of them and quickly shifted to another, the victim laying a wager that he knows under which cup it is; hence, to cheat by any trick.
- noun A sleight-of-hand trick played with three small cups, shaped like thimbles, and a small ball or little pea.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A game of skill which requires the bettor to guess under which of three small cups (or
thimbles ) a pea-sized object has been placed after the party operating the game rapidly rearranges them, providing opportunity forsleight-of-hand trickery ; ashell game . - noun One operating such a game.
- verb To cheat in the thimblerig game.
- verb To cheat by trickery.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a swindling sleight-of-hand game; victim guesses which of three things a pellet is under
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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To play fast and loose now means to behave in a deceitful or irresponsible manner. shell game This old gambling game (earlier known as thimblerig), in which the operator openly places a pea under one of three walnut shells, then rapidly shifts the shells around and challenges a sucker to bet on the location of the pea, has given its name to any kind of chicanery or subterfuge.
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Our artist then can cover up faces, and yet show them quite clearly, as in the thimblerig group; or he can do without faces altogether; or he can, at a pinch, provide a countenance for a gentleman out of any given object — a beautiful Irish physiognomy being moulded upon a keg of whiskey; and a jolly
George Cruikshank 2006
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But the only object of this argument is to show how mal-adroitly Mr. Landor plays at thimblerig.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 330, April 1843 Various
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In these circumstances, and smarting as I was under the recollection of recent defeat, it is not strange that I thought I detected the old political ruse of dressing the wolf in sheep's clothing, of using handsome pledges as a mask to deceive the gullible, and that I assumed that this scholarly amateur in politics was being used for their own purposes by masters and veterans in the old game of thimblerig.
Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him Joseph P. Tumulty
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In these circumstances, and smarting as I was under the recollection of recent defeat, it is not strange that I thought I detected the old political ruse of dressing the wolf in sheep's clothing, of using handsome pledges as a mask to deceive the gullible, and that I assumed that this scholarly amateur in politics was being used for their own purposes by masters and veterans in the old game of thimblerig.
Woodrow Wilson as I know Him Tumulty, Joseph P 1921
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And yet every day one saw more distinctly that they were the pea in the thimblerig of life, the hub of a universe which, to the approbation of the majority they represented, they were fast making uninhabitable.
The Best British Short Stories of 1922 John Cournos 1915
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Your genuine pietist would find a mystical sense in thimblerig.
The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Huxley, Leonard 1900
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"Telling the Bees," "Hey for the Ferry!" and two in the style of Frith, all thimblerig and crinolines, given them by Swithin.
Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works John Galsworthy 1900
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Your genuine pietist would find a mystical sense in thimblerig.
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3 Leonard Huxley 1896
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Russian carnival on the ice, oxen being sometimes roasted whole, and all kinds of "fakirs," as they are now termed, selling doughnuts, spruce-beer, and gingerbread, or tempting the adventurous with thimblerig; many pedestrians stopping at the old-fashioned inn on Smith's
Memoirs Charles Godfrey Leland 1863
qms commented on the word thimblerig
Court jester was never a simple gig
Though tired you danced a nimble jig
Since courtiers were fond
At times to be conned
You had to have mastered the thimblerig.
April 1, 2017