legerdemain

See also: léger de main

English

WOTD – 26 March 2006

Etymology

From Middle English legerdemeyn, lechardemane, from Old French léger de main (literally “light of hand”), a phrase that meant “dexterous, skillful at fooling others (especially through sleights of hand”), which was however treated as a noun when it was borrowed by late Middle English. The Modern French descendant léger de main of the Old French phrase is archaic but still sometimes found in older literature and simply means “skillful” without any connotation of sleight of hand.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌlɛd͡ʒ.ə.dɨˈmeɪn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.əɹ.dəˌmeɪn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

  Rhymes: -eɪn

• Hyphenation: leg‧er‧de‧main

Noun

legerdemain (usually uncountable, plural legerdemains)

1. Sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     For he in slights and jugling feates did flow, / And of legierdemayne the mysteries did know.

   • 2021 March 8, Michael C. Dorf, “Old-School Intentions-and-Expectations Originalism in the Nominal Damages Case”, in Dorf on Law:

     Chief Justice Roberts does more or less the same thing in dissent: He practices intentions-and-expectations originalism while randomly sprinkling some public-meaning originalism fairy dust over his description of his enterprise, perhaps in the subconscious hope that no one will notice the legerdemain.

2. A show of skill or deceitful ability.
   • 1673, Gilbert Burnet, The mystery of iniquity unvailed, London, page 128:

     Certainly, that they are to this day so rife in Italy and Spain, and so scant in Britain, is a shrewd ground to apprehend Legerdemain, and forgery, in the accounts we get of their later Saints.

Synonyms

• prestidigitation
• sleight of hand

Translations

sleight of hand

• Finnish: silmänkääntötemppu (fi)
• Hungarian: szemfényvesztés (hu)
• Latin: praestīgia f
• Russian: ло́вкость рук (lóvkostʹ ruk)
• Spanish: escamoteo (es) m, prestidigitación (es) f
• Swedish: taskspeleri n
• Turkish: el çabukluğu (tr)

Further reading

• sleight of hand on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• greenmailed