chicanery
noun

- verbal deception or trickery

- deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry

- clever, dishonest talk or behaviour that is used to deceive or trick people

Collins Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionary

—

WORD ORIGIN & USAGE



Chicanery first entered English around 1609, borrowed directly from French chicanerie — defined in Randle Cotgrave's 1611 French-English dictionary as "wrangling, pettifogging; litigious, or craftie pleading; the perplexing of a cause with tricks."

The French came from chicaner — "to dispute by means of quibbles, to sue, to prosecute" — which is where the related English word chicane comes from (the sharp bend on a racing circuit, and the card game term for a hand with no trumps).

Beyond French, the origin becomes disputed. One strong theory traces it to Middle Dutch schicken — "to arrange, to manage" — possibly with the sense of arranging things to suit yourself. Another traces it to the Persian game of chawgan (polo), which the Crusaders encountered and brought back to Europe as chicane — a game of precise manoeuvres, where you outplay the opponent not by force but by clever positioning.

By the time the word settled into English in the early 1600s, it had lost any connection to sport and meant purely one thing: using legal or rhetorical tricks to confuse, delay and deceive.

German speakers take care! In English, chicanery implies clever wrongdoing — someone bending the rules with sophistication. In German, Schikane often carries a sharper edge of deliberate cruelty or petty persecution — a Behördenschikane isn't just tricky, it's designed to torment.

—

THE FINE PRINT PROBLEM

The core of chicanery involves being dishonest in ways that look perfectly legitimate. The contract is real. The words are accurate. Nothing was technically lied about. But the result is that we walk away with far less than we thought we were getting.

This is what separates chicanery from ordinary lying. A lie can be disproved. Chicanery is harder to pin down because the deceiver stays on the right side of the facts while steering us toward the wrong conclusion. Politicians do it with statistics. Advertisers do it with pricing. Bosses do it during performance reviews.

What makes it so effective is that the victim often feels stupid rather than wronged. He signed the contract. He heard the speech. He read the terms. The shame of being outmanoeuvred stops many people from complaining.

Nowadays, it's easy to ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to analyse contracts and to highlight dubious or disadvantageous passages,... and then to compare the advice of all three.

Helga & Paul Smith

—

SYNONYMS

a stitch-up, artful dodging, backhanded/double dealing, bait and switch, behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, CHICANERY, clever deception, cooked books, crafty manoeuvring, crooked dealing, cunning trickery, deceit, deception, dirty dealing (pool, tricks), dissembling, dissimulation, duplicity, economical with the truth, false pretences, fine print tricks, fly-by-night, fraud, gaming the system, guile, hiding behind the rules, hoodwinking, imposture, in bad faith, jiggery-pokery, knavery, leading up the garden path, legal hairsplitting (wrangling), legerdemain, loaded language, malfeasance, manoeuvring, misleading framing, moving the goalposts, not playing straight, perfidy, pettifoggery, playing both ends against the middle, playing fast and loose, playing games, pulling a fast one (the wool over someone's eyes), questionable tactics, sharp dealing (practice), shady business, skulduggery, sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors, sneaky tactics, sophistry, spinning a yarn, stringing along, subterfuge, swindling, taking someone for a ride, technical trickery, the old switcheroo, treachery, trickery, two-faced/underhand dealing, weasel wording, with a forked tongue, working the angles

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Be careful with the word CHICANERY, it usually doesn’t refer to the German meaning of Schikane (harassment).”

—
PLEASE SUPPORT US

On evenings and weekends, I research and write your daily OWAD newsletter together with Helga (my lovely wife and business partner) and our eagle-eyed daughter Jennifer. It remains FREE, AD-FREE, and ALIVE thanks to voluntary donations from appreciative readers.

If you aren’t already, please consider supporting us — even a small donation, equivalent to just 1-cup-of-coffee a month, would help us in covering expenses for mailing, site-hosting, maintenance, and service.

Just head over to DonorBox:
https://donorbox.org/owad-q4-2023-5

or

Bank transfer:
Paul Smith
IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40

Important: please state as ’Verwendungszweck’: “OWAD donation” and the email address used to subscribe to OWAD.

Thanks so much,

Paul
(OWAD Founder)