What does "trickery" mean?

Deception, deceit or underhanded behavior.

What is a synonym for "trickery"?

Common synonyms include: chicanery, hocus-pocus, hocus pocus, jiggery pokery, art, artful dodge.

Pronounced //ˈtɹɪ.kə.ɹi//.

//ˈtɹɪ.kə.ɹi// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Noun

1
Deception, deceit or underhanded behavior. countable, uncountable
"[H]e did not wrap his rugged subject in silks and ermines, and other sickly trickeries of phrase."
2
the use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them) wordnet
3
The art of dressing up; imposture, pretense. uncountable
4
verbal misrepresentation intended to take advantage of you in some way wordnet
5
Artifice; the use of one or more stratagems. uncountable
"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."

"What sort of trickery do you have in store for me tonight?"

From trick + -ery, first recorded in 1719.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.