ledgerdemain

Noun

legerdemain (usually uncountable, plural legerdemains)

1. (usually) Sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.
   • For he in slights and jugling feates did flow, / And of legierdemayne the mysteries did know.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   prestidigitation, sleight of hand, conjuration, conjuring, dweomercraft, hocus-pocus, illusionism, jugglery, magic, palmistry

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

   Synonyms:

   jugglery, sleight of hand, deception, imposition, hype, deceit, dupery, fiddle, fetch, hocus-pocus