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Chicanery Has Roots in French
We have hardly any words that do so fully expresse the French clinquant, naiveté … chicaneries. So lamented English writer John Evelyn in a letter to Sir Peter Wyche in 1665. Evelyn and Wyche were members of a group called the Royal Society, which had formed a committee emulating the French Academy for the purpose of "improving the English language." We can surmise that, in Evelyn's estimation, the addition of chicanery to English from French was an improvement. What he apparently didn't realize was that English speakers had adopted the word from the French chicanerie before he wished for it; the term appears in English manuscripts dating from 1609. Similarly, clinquant ("glittering with gold or tinsel") dates from 1591. Naïveté, on the other hand, waited until 1673 to appear.
Synonyms
Examples of chicanery in a Sentence
Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 6 Sep. 2023
The point stressed is chicanery, congratulating political shenanigans, not the forefathers’ wisdom.
—Armond White, National Review, 5 July 2023
And there are some genuinely affecting, powerful moments once all the chicanery is set aside.
—Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 8 June 2023
Finally, another pulse aimed at both Bob and the intermediary atom simultaneously transmitted the message to Bob and made a measurement there, completing the energy chicanery.
—Tara C. Smith, Quanta Magazine, 23 Feb. 2023
Yet Zadi delights, with bitter humor, in the chicanery, double-dealing, and backstabbing that take place behind the scenes of political life.
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2023
Essentially, a tiny minority of people at the top of Lebanese society managed to divert a good chunk of global income flows and the vast majority of what Lebanon actually does produce into their own pockets, through a combination of chicanery and outright corruption.
—Ryan Cooper, TheWeek, 6 Aug. 2020
Kerry implied that such chicanery contributed to his defeat in 2004 and former Vice President Al Gore’s loss in 2000, maintaining that this pattern unfolded recently in Georgia — an apparent reference to Stacey Abrams’s defeat in the state’s 2018 gubernatorial race.
—Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner, 19 June 2020
But the chicaneries of 1968 and 1980 were left to historians and partisans to sort out and debate decades later.
—Jonathan Weisman, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2023
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'chicanery.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
borrowed from French chicanerie "quibbling on minor points of law brought up to complicate a judicial case," going back to Middle French chiquanerie, from chicaner "to dispute by means of quibbles," earlier "to sue, prosecute" + -erie -ery — more at chicane entry 1
Note: Randle Cotgrave's French-English dictionary (1611) defines chicanerie as "wrangling, pettifogging; litigious, or craftie pleading; the perplexing of a cause with trickes; or the pestering thereof with (subtile, but) impertinent words."
1589, in the meaning defined at sense 1
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Cite this Entry
“Chicanery.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chicanery. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.
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