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.

Noun

(en noun)

Any act of deception carried out for the purpose of unfair, undeserved and/or unlawful gain.

* Alexander Pope

If success a lover's toil attends, / Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=

, title=Internal Combustion , chapter=1 citation , passage=But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud , and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.}}

The assumption of a false identity to such deceptive end.

A person who performs any such trick.

(obsolete) A trap or snare.

* Milton

to draw the proud King Ahab into fraud