conspirancy

Noun

conspiracy (countable and uncountable, plural conspiracies)

1. An agreement or arrangement between multiple parties to do something harmful, immoral or subversive; an instance of collusion.
   • Conspiracies, like all other exercises of human ingenuity, are of very different kinds. The gloomy plots arranged in old Italian halls...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter IV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 23
   1. An agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future.
   2. (broadly) A secret agreement to do something.
      • The former programme of the entertainments, which were to result from this generous conspiracy to assist a man whom fortune had buffeted, was eagerly looked for, not only for the reunion of old favorites that it promised to bring about, but out of sympathy for the sentiment which has prompted this...1863 May 30, “Lord Dudley and Mr. Lumley”, in The Musical World, volume 41, number 22, page 339
   3. (broadly) An agreement to work together to bring something about; an act or instance of conspiring.
      • But this I call civil life […] living [together] in good and politic order, one ever ready to do good to another, and as it were conspiring [together] in all virtue and honesty. […] You said right now that this civil life was a politic order and, as it were, a conspiracy in honesty and virtue, […]1948 [c. 1530], Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue Between Reginald Pole & Thomas Lupset
   4. (proscribed, by ellipsis) A conspiracy theory; a hypothesis alleging conspiracy.
      • Rather than propagating conspiracies about the evils of wealthy Jewry, they beat up poor Roma in back alleys.2008, Edward Snajdr, Nature Protests: The End of Ecology in Slovakia, University of Washington Press, →ISBN, page 176
2. (collective, rare) A group of various animals.
   • She was wary, jumping at imagined shadows and at the prowlings of a conspiracy of cats lurking in an alley1982, Fern Michaels, Panda Bear Is Critical, Macmillan, page 17

See all 10 meanings of conspiracy