Noun

(en noun)

A wonderful event occurring in the physical world attributed to supernatural powers.

Many religious beliefs are based on miracles .

An example of a miracle associated with Muhammad is the splitting of the moon.

A fortunate outcome that prevails despite overwhelming odds against it.

* 1966 November 25, "A Great Document Made by Wisdom and Luck", in Life , volume 61, number 22, page 13:

Secondly, it was a miracle that a document hammered out with such difficulty, satisfying very few of its authors completely and satisfying some of them very little, would turn out to be the most successful political invention in history.

* 1993 , Hatch N. Gardner and Frank H. Winter, P-51 Mustang (Turner Publishing Company), page 78:

It was a miracle that I survived that ditching in the high waves because I had my seat belt and shoulder harness unbuckled in anticipation of bailing out.

* 2003 , Eric Lionel Jones, The European miracle: environments, economies, and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia (Cambridge University Press), page 218:

Seen in this light it was a miracle of economic history that Europe was able to undertake so much higher a proportion of its expansion overseas, and secure a massive injection of resources and big markets without a commensurate growth in her numbers.

An awesome and exceptional example of something

* 1847 , Honoré de Balzac, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life , page 323:

The home of our kings, over which you tread as you pace the immense hall known as the Salle des Pas-Perdus, was a miracle of architecture.

* 2008 , Joseph R. Conlin, The American Past: A Survey of American History (Cengage Learning), page 670:

It was a miracle' of engineering that made possible, with the cheap electricity the dam generated, another kind of ' miracle : the bizarre, superilluminated city of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Noun

(trickeries)

(uncountable) Deception or underhanded behavior.

* 1852 , , Bleak House , ch. 1:

In trickery , evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good.

(uncountable) The art of dressing up; imposture.

(uncountable) Artifice; the use of one or more stratagems.

* {{quote-news

, year=2012 , date=April 21 , author=Jonathan Jurejko , title=Newcastle 3-0 Stoke , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=French winger Hatem Ben Arfa has also taken plenty of plaudits recently and he was the architect of the opening goal with some superb trickery on the left touchline.}}

(countable) An instance of deception, underhanded behavior, dressing up, imposture, artifice, etc.

* 1809 , , Knickerbocker's History of New York , ch. 47:

[H]e did not wrap his rugged subject in silks and ermines, and other sickly trickeries of phrase.

* 1898 , , "See UP" in Stories in Light and Shadow :

The miners found diversions even in his alleged frauds and trickeries . . . and were fond of relating with great gusto his evasion of the Foreign Miners' Tax.