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Chicane   Listen
noun
Chicane  n.  
1.
The use of artful subterfuge, designed to draw away attention from the merits of a case or question; specifically applied to legal proceedings; trickery; chicanery; caviling; sophistry. "To shuffle from them by chicane." "To cut short this chicane, I propound it fairly to your own conscience."
2.
(Card playing) In bridge, the holding of a hand without trumps, or the hand itself. It counts as simple honors.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chicane" Quotes from Famous Books



... their name. There is no surer sign of a bad oppressive rule, than when the titles of the administrators of law, titles which should be in themselves so honourable, thus acquire a hateful undermeaning. What a world of concussions, chicane and fraud, must have found place, before tax- gatherer, or exciseman, 'publican,' as in our English Bible, could become a word steeped in hatred and scorn, as alike for Greek and Jew it was; while, on the other hand, however ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... the tendency of self-government and freedom of trade, to beget contentment and material progress. Canada will remain attached to England, though tied to her neither by the golden links of protection, nor by the meshes of old-fashioned colonial office jobbing and chicane. But if you allow the Americans to withhold the boon which you have the means of extorting if you will, I much fear that the closing period of the connection between Great Britain and Canada will be marked by incidents which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... with China, know what countless facilities exist for his doing indirectly what he dares not, or may choose not, to do openly. We are not without fear, from our knowledge of the Chinese character, and of their long-established mode of procedure, that every chicane and evasion will be resorted to, in order to neutralize and nullify, as far as possible, the commercial advantages which we have, at the cannon's mouth, extorted from them. A great deal, at all events, will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... foreign visitors, if they be men enervated by the climate or by pleasure, indifferent to the fate of nations, strangers to political chicane, they will, in the natural order of events, become converted to the ideas of the Roman aristocracy, between a quadrille and a ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... to wake up the poor little porter, as on that night when he returned from Madame Uccelli's. The porter was again equal to his duty, and contrived to light a new candle to show him the way to his room. The repetition, almost mechanical, of this small chicane made Colville smile, and this apparently encouraged the porter to ask, as if he supposed him to have been ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France. Why not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute to plain manliness? Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane, the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by the name of ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... "Trade where you will," saith Nature. "It was so I brought the tree to the barren isle, and scattered the life of the seas." Authority of law! Respect the law, and to that end let us have laws that are respectable. Laws are made to be kept, else we live in a house of chicane. But there is a danger that decrees may thicken until they form a dungeon grate for Freedom, until, like Gulliver, she is held down to earth by every several hair. Few laws and just, and those not lightly broken. The Contract between the States—let it be kept. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... the wealth and gain accruing to the inhabitants of London and Paris by law-suits (or La chicane) I only say that the courts of London extend to all England and Wales, and affect seven millions of people, whereas those of Paris do not extend near so far. Moreover, there is no palpable conspicuous ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... had dealt the first hand, made a most improper diamond declaration. Her son unfilially doubled, and, Eve having chicane—a tragedy which her partner evidently seemed to consider could have been avoided by the exercise of ordinary common sense—Peter and his partner, despite Peter's best efforts, ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... faithful." "To human apprehension, the papal Inquisition was well-nigh ubiquitous, omniscient, and omnipotent." Inquisitors were set free from all rules which had been found necessary to save judges from judicial error,[590] and the formularies to guide inquisitors inculcated chicane, terrorism, deception, and brow-beating, and an art of entangling the accused in casuistry and dialectics. A new crime was invented for the cases in which confession could not be obtained: suspicion of heresy, which had three degrees, "light," "vehement," ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... The despotic viceroy soon found that he could not expect entire support from Argyle. Since the most powerful chief in the kingdom could not be gained, it was thought necessary that he should be destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that even the spirit of party and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of them, he was brought to trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. The partisans of the Stuarts afterwards asserted that it was never meant to carry this sentence into effect, and that the only object ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... No man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal. It had collected round itself an army of the worst part of the native population—informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of chicane; and above all, a banditti of bailiffs' followers compared with whom the retainers of the worst English spunging- houses, in the worst times, might be considered as upright and tender-hearted. There were instances in which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the white man, as yet, is a half-tamed pirate, and avails himself as much as ever of the maxim, "Might makes right." All that civilization does for the generality is to cover up this with a veil of subtle evasions and chicane, and here and there to rouse the individual mind to appeal ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... the most infamous Chief Justice that ever existed in England. Charles II. and James II. well acquainted with his talents for chicane, his debauchery and blood-thirstiness, his baseness and his crimes, made use of him to exterminate, with the sword of law, all those worthy men who defended the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... l'Ecole des Femmes. Fidelia is Shakespeare's Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and the Widow Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley's best comic character, is the Countess in Racine's Plaideurs, talking the jargon of English instead of that of French chicane. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... King, Lords, or Commons, and it would be quite time enough to consider that point when we were assembled. It always required considerable address and presence of mind to keep the upper hand of these legal quirk-dealers, these impudent under-strappers, whose whole trade consists in trick and chicane; but I do not recollect ever having been outwitted by any one of them as to the proceedings of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... Chivalric spirit nearly a hundred years before. It had died with Francis I. The wars of the League were wars of Chicane; Artifice in arms, Subtlety in steel coats. The profligacy of the courts of Louis Quatorze, and his successors, dissolved at once the morals and the mind of France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... Lecointre, whose figure is almost ludicrous, and who is no orator, was to repeat a voluminous denunciation, amidst the clamour, abuse, chicane, and derision of the whole Convention. But there are occasions when the keenest ridicule is pointless; when the mind, armed by truth and elevated by humanity, rejects its insidious efforts—and, absorbed by more laudable feelings, despises even the smile of contempt. The justice ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... endure it should miscarry. For God's sake consider only to what a dismal condition old Lewis is brought. He is at an end of all his cash; his attorneys have hardly one trick left; they are at an end of all their chicane; besides, he has both his law and his daily bread now upon trust. Hold out only one term longer, and I'll warrant you before the next we shall have him in the Fleet. I'll bring him to the pillory; his ears shall ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... with brilliant black eyes and regular features, and a cast of countenance that forcibly reminded him of the likenesses of Edgar A. Poe, while the expression denoted more of chicane than chivalry in his character. The other, a fresh, sweet, girlish face, eloquent with innocence and purity, with clear, gray eyes, overhung by jetty lashes, and overarched by black brows, while a mass of dark hair was heaped in short curls on ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... the vast plain of the Lower Ganges. Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... impiety, you have let the supply of noble human wisdom die out; and the wisdom that now courts your universal suffrages is beggarly human attorneyism or sham-wisdom, which is not an insight into the Laws of God's Universe, but into the laws of hungry Egoism and the Devil's Chicane, and can in the end profit no community ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... few other French words which like 'prestige' are at this moment hovering on the verge of English, hardly knowing whether they shall become such, or no. Such are 'ennui', 'exploitation', 'verve', 'persiflage', 'badinage', 'chicane', 'finesse', and others; all of them often employed by us,—and it is out of such frequent employment that adoption proceeds,—because expressing shades of meaning not expressed by any words of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... by her false guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, when Dulness ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... cxerizo. Cherub kerubo. Chess-pieces sxakoj. Chess-board sxaka tabulo. Chest of drawers komodo. Chest (box) kesto. Chest brusto. Chestnut (edible) kasxtano. Chevalier kavaliro. Chew macxi. Chicane cxikani. Chicken kokido. Chicken-house kokejo. Chicory cikorio. Chide riprocxi. Chief cxefo. Chief cxefa. Chiffonier cxifonujo. Chignon harligajxo. Chilblain frostabsceso. Child infano. Childhood infaneco. Childish infana. Childishness infanajxo. Chill ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes



Words linked to "Chicane" :   object, wile, movable barrier, jockey, chouse, put-on, dissembling, trounce, cheat, trickery, chicanery, dupery, deceit, shaft, crush, humbug, beat out, vanquish, dissimulation, shenanigan, shell, fraudulence, deception, hoax, fraud, bridge hand, jugglery, guile, screw, cavil



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