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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



... deep enough to drown them; and if they underwent such treatment without injury, she held them innocent. Another device was the oath. The parties went to the Church altar and swore their innocence or the justice of their cause. But all these methods gave room for chicane. Kings and knights protested that the oath led to indiscriminate perjury, that if the priests' hands were tickled with money the hot iron was only painted, and that a suitable fee could render the boiling liquid innocuous to the skin of a baby. They therefore drew their swords, exclaiming, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... industry and commerce and affected pretty nearly all articles of human consumption. It came to that point, as the histories tell us, that no one could ever depend on anything he purchased being what it appeared or was represented. The whole atmosphere of trade was mephitic with chicane. It became the policy of the capitalists engaged in the most important lines of manufacture to turn out goods expressly made with a view to wearing as short a time as possible, so as to need the speedier renewal. They taught their very ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... in this title of theirs, was associated with 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 unwelcome the visits of the one or ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... is By God decreed, that for thy forfeit bliss In Sparta thou shalt pay the price in Troy, Dishonour for lost honour, pain for joy; By what hot thought impelled, by that alone Win back; by violence violence atone. If by chicane thou fleddest, by chicane Win back thy blotted footprints. Out again With all thine arts of kisses slow and long, Of smiles and stroking hands, and crooning song Whenas full-fed with love thou lulledst asleep; ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... that of O'Neill—the princely house of Ulster, the champions of the Red Hand, who, for centuries, in the struggles of the nation against the Saxon invader, led the hosts of their people to victory, and only succumbed at last when poison and treachery, and chicane had accomplished what force failed to effect; for their valor was powerless against the dagger of the assassin, as were their honesty and open-heartedness against the bad faith of England's perjured tools. Like many a noble and ancient Irish house, its scions are to-day to be ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... prescriptions as covered the titles of other voluntary bodies to their places of worship, their school-houses, and their burial-grounds. But what was thus a question of property was treated as if it were a question of divinity; 'bigotry sought aid from chicane,' and a tremendous clamour was raised by anglicans, wesleyans, presbyterians, not because they had an inch of locus standi in the business, but because unitarianism was scandalous heresy and sin. Follett made a masterly lawyer's speech, Sheil the speech of a ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... translated from the Critique de 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

... be, going about and asserting to listening multitudes that we are fighting for our very existence as a nation. We most emphatically are not. It is just conceivable that certain unscrupulous marplots might by chicane produce such domestic discord in this country as would undermine the very basis of victory. I regard the thing as in the very highest degree improbable, but it can be conceived. The result might be an inconclusive peace, and another war, say, in twenty years, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... 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 of Lecointre's ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... 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 to heaven ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... the chicane and intrigue of the more clever among them roused his indignation he would exclaim: "They're putting me through the smut-machine!"—an ignominious, exasperating treatment which he refused to undergo without loud protests. These protests often reduced his wife to trembling and to tears. At such ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... handsome man, 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 her forehead and temples, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... borrowing of money, the parent of sloth, frauds, and chicane, king Asychis made a very judicious law.(331) The wisest and best regulated states, as Athens and Rome, ever found insuperable difficulties, in contriving a just medium, to restrain, on one hand, the cruelty of the creditor in the exaction of his loan; and on the other, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... 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 will damp the ardour of those who desire ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole: and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth, and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to shake off the proprietary authority, and renounce their allegiance. Their letters from Trott served to confirm the truth, which intimated that Yonge, though an officer of the Proprietors, by mean subtilty and chicane had assisted the people in forming plausible pretences for that purpose. For three months Yonge attended the Palatine's court, to give the board all possible information about the state of affairs in their colony, and to accomplish the ends ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... Brittany, where the state of affairs required his presence. The death of that victorious monarch happened before Richemont's return; and this prince pretended that, as his word was given personally to Henry V., he was not bound to fulfil it towards his son and successor; a chicane which the regent, as he could not force him to compliance, deemed it prudent to overlook. An interview was settled at Amiens between the dukes of Bedford, Burgundy, and Brittany, at which the count of Richemont was also present:[*] the alliance was renewed between these princes: and the regent persuaded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... of the arch that sustained the structure of chicane. To dislodge him was the direct way to collapse it. I was about to set to work when Langdon, feeling that he ought to have a large supply of cash in the troublous times I was creating, increased the capital stock of his already enormously overcapitalized Textile ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... the newspaper-columns. What Walton wants to say he says. You can make no mistake about his meaning; all is as lucid as the water of a spring. He does not play upon your wonderment with tropes. There is no chicane of the pen; he has some pleasant matters to tell of, and he tells ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... no doubt, every quibble that it offers will be twisted to the best purpose for your interest. You're a dabster at chicane, or you're preciously belied. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... the permanent 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 ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... persevere in my endeavors to acquire the confidence and esteem of this government—not by improper compliances, but by that sincerity, candor, truth, and prudence, which, in my opinion, will always prove to be more wise and more effectual than finesse and chicane. Formal discussions of disputed points should, in my judgment, be postponed until the case becomes desperate; my present object is to accommodate, rather than to convert or convince. Men who sign their names to arguments seldom retract. If, however, my present plan should fail, I shall ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... at least equally applicable to 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... odious and detestable vices will grow most rankly and spread most rapidly in a Republic. When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a reason why the great and wise and learned should be selected ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Lordships will bear in mind that I do not advert to this thing, which they bring as evidence, in the way of imputation of its being weak, improper, and insufficient evidence, but as an incontrovertible proof of crimes, and of a systematic design to ruin the accused party, by force there and by chicane here: these are the principles upon which I am going to talk to you upon this abominable subject,—of which, I am sorry to say, I have no words sufficient to express my horror. No words can express ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... proofs lie in doing the works of the Master. He is a Christian who does these works; he who does not is none. Christianity is not a failure, but organized ecclesiasticism, which always collapses before a world crisis, has failed utterly. The hideous chicane of imperial government and imperial religion against mankind has resulted in a Christian veneer, which cracks at the first test and reveals the unchanged human brute beneath. The nations which writhe in deadly embrace to-day have never sought to prove God. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... scorn and vituperate its charlatan head or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in Zola's Debacle, most of us, if we are candid, will confess that the Second Empire, especially the Paris of Morny and Hausmann, of cynicism and splendour, of frivolity and chicane, of servile obsequiousness and haughty pretension, the France and the Paris that drew to themselves the eyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck, have for us a fascination almost as great ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... upon the soul of the mother. The distiller was to her as the publican to the ancient Jew. No dealing in rags and marine stores, no scraping of a fortune by pettifogging, chicane, and cheating, was to her half so abominable as the trade of a brewer. Worse yet was a brewer owning public-houses, gathering riches in half-pence wet with beer and smelling of gin. The brewer was to her a moral pariah; only a distiller ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... of dynasty; but the present generation has never been called upon to learn that deepest lesson of politics which is taught by a common danger, throwing the people back on their national instincts, and superseding party-leaders, the peddlers of chicane, with men adequate to great occasions and dealers in destiny. Such a crisis is now upon us; and if the virtue of the people make up for the imbecility of the Executive, as we have little doubt that it will, if the public spirit of the whole country be awakened ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... Brigham Young, struck them down, as in the Mountain Meadows murders. This was in the day when the arm of national power was too short to reach them. Now, when it can reach them, the Church conspires where before it assassinated, and strives to do by chicane what it aforetime did by shedding blood. And all to defend itself ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... in the midst of all the bloodshed, chicane and fraud being resorted to on a colossal scale in the west, the whole humanity is silently but surely making progress towards a better age. And India by finding true independence and self-expression through an imperishable Hindu-Muslim unity and through non-violent ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... citizen. I heard, indeed, that known citizens of all the chief towns returned to their towns or to the vicinity thereof in the uniform and with the pleasing manners of German warriors. The organisation for doing good to Belgium against Belgium's will was an incomparable piece of chicane and pure rascality. Strange—Belgians were long ago convinced that the visitation was inevitably coming, and had fallen into the habit of discussing it placidly ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... 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

... politic distinction, that the country can afford. But supposing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House of Commons should be composed in the same manner with the Tiers-Etat in France, would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even conceived without horror? God forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory to that profession, which is another priesthood, administering the rights of sacred justice. But whilst I revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as much as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... between France and England soon after Edward had settled the Scottish succession. Neither Edward nor Philip the Fair sought a conflict. Edward was satisfied with his diplomatic successes, and Philip's designs upon Gascony were better pursued by chicane than by warfare. But questions arose of a different kind from the disputes as to feudal right, which had been hitherto the principal matters in debate between the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout



Words linked to "Chicane" :   crush, wile, vanquish, chouse, cavil, deceit, carp, trickery, hoax, jockey, put-on, guile, bridge hand, fraudulence, screw, shenanigan, beat, shaft, dissimulation, humbug



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