Word.ws English Dictionary

legerdemain

Syllables: leg·er·de·mainUK/ˌlɛd͡ʒ.ə.dɨˈmeɪn//ˈlɛd͡ʒ.əɹ.dəˌmeɪn/

legerdemain noun: sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.

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
    • […] A deliberate man with infinite resources of patience, he was content to progress by easy stages toward the millennium. Some private legerdemain must have reconciled him to the "practical" methods that were employed. […]1959, Margaret Leech, “Champion of Protection”, in In the Days of McKinley, New York: Harper & Brothers, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 35–36
  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
    • Just for a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika’s skill, he supposed himself a victim of legerdemain.1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter II, in Zuleika Dobson

legerdemain meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

legerdemain in Tamil

கண்கட்டு வித்தை, கைவரிசை

legerdemain in Urdu

ہتھکنڈا

legerdemain in Bengali

হাতের চাতুর্য, ভেলকি, প্রতারণা

legerdemain in Malayalam

conjuring, sleight of hand, magic
കയ്യടക്കം, കൺകെട്ട്, കൺകെട്ടുവിദ്യ, ചപ്പിടി, ജാലം, ചപ്പിടിവിദ്യ
craftiness, trickery, cunning
കയ്യടക്കം, സൂത്രം, സൂത്രപ്പണി, തന്ത്രം, അഭ്യാസം, ജാലകം
More languagesFewer languages
legerdemain in Kannada
ಕೈಚಳಕ, ಹಸ್ತಕೌಶಲ, ಇಂದ್ರಜಾಲ, ವಂಚನೆ

Synonyms of legerdemain

16 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of legerdemain

Forms of legerdemain

plurallegerdemains

Origin of legerdemain

From Middle English legerdemeyn, lechardemane, from Old French léger de main (literally “light of hand”), a phrase that meant “dexterous, skillful at fooling others (especially through sleights of hand)”, which was however treated as a noun when it was borrowed by late Middle English. The Modern French descendant léger de main of the Old French phrase is archaic but still sometimes found in older literature and simply means “skillful” without any connotation of sleight of hand.

Words formed from legerdemain

Words that rhyme with legerdemain

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about legerdemain

What does legerdemain mean?
Legerdemain means sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.
What is legerdemain in Tamil?
Legerdemain in Tamil is கண்கட்டு வித்தை, கைவரிசை. See Legerdemain meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is legerdemain?
Legerdemain is a noun.
How do you pronounce legerdemain?
Legerdemain is pronounced /ˌlɛd͡ʒ.ə.dɨˈmeɪn/ (UK).
What is the plural of legerdemain?
The plural of legerdemain is legerdemains.

Words near legerdemain in the dictionary

  1. legendry
  2. legends
  3. leger
  4. leger line
  5. leger lines
  6. legerdemain
  7. legerdemainist
  8. legerdemainists
  9. legerdemains
  10. Legere
  11. legered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: legerdemain (page history and authors); legerdemain (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legerdemain (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legerdemain (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legerdemain (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); legerdemain (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “legerdemain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/legerdemain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.