skulduggery
Syllables: skul·dug·ge·ryUK/skʌlˈdʌɡəɹi/US/ˌskʌlˈdʌɡəɹi/
skulduggery noun: a devious device or trick.
Noun
skulduggery (countable and uncountable, plural skulduggeries)
- A devious device or trick.
- A private company cannot get away with a skulduggery of that sort. Once it has paid out its money for taxes, it cannot reach into the public treasury and get it back and apply it on its amortization account.1935, Public Utilities Fortnightly, volume 15, number 2, Washington, D.C.: Public Utilities Reports, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 399, column 1
- And you, O student, might do worse than to investigate the assorted sculduggeries of this obscure trio: […]1941, Norman Cousins, editor, Saturday Review, volume 24, New York, N.Y.: Saturday Review Associates, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6
- Synonyms:
- ruse, stratagem, subterfuge
- Dishonest, underhanded, or unscrupulous activities or behaviour.
- And I have another reason which I will express to my St Paul friends, and that is, that they have always been controlled in their political action here by a class of men who have always some traps set for the country members—by men who are always up to this border ruffian kind of trickery—this kind...1857 July 27, St. A. D. Balcombe, President of the Convention; T. F. Andrews, official reporter, “Thirteenth Day”, in Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention for the Territory of...
- How did Hercules (Herc. of antiquity) slay the Hydrant and cleanse the stables of Oregon? Did it all by main force, didn't he? Power? Shenanigan? Skulduggery? Of course he did.1867, Hans Patrick Le Connor [pseudonym; John L. Bowman], “The Railroad ‘Ring.’ [A Chapter Devoted Exclusively to the Celebrated Iron Mountain Railroad Transaction.]”, in You and Me; or, Sketches for...
- Synonyms:
- dishonesty, jiggery-pokery, subterfuge, thugduggery, trickery, underhandedness, unscrupulousness
skulduggery meaning in Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam
skulduggery in Tamil
- நேர்மையற்ற நடத்தை
skulduggery in Bengali
- প্রতারণা, কারচুপি, অসাধু আচরণ
skulduggery in Malayalam
- fraudulence, trickery, sharp practice
- സൂത്രം, തട്ടിപ്പ്, സൂത്രപ്പണി, സമർത്ഥമായ വഞ്ചന, ഛലരചന, ചുഴിപ്പ്
Examples of skulduggery in a sentence
- But in the writing, I prudently had changed the plot away from all the skulduggery I knew about, or suspected, or had heard about.1964, Leonard Sanders, “Introduction”, in The Wooden Horseshoe, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, →OCLC; republished as James Ward Lee, editor...
- This naked political skulduggery provoked scemes of uproar in the senate2007, David Potter, chapter 1, in The Emperors of Rome, page 27:
- Rivals is “also a good reflection of the competitiveness and skulduggery that played out in real life”, says Lamb, […].2026 June 13, Tara Conlan, “When ‘Rivals’ was reality TV”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN...
Synonyms of skulduggery
- ruse
- stratagem
- subterfuge
- dishonesty
- jiggery-pokery
- thugduggery
- trickery
- underhandedness
- unscrupulousness
Antonyms
Forms of skulduggery
| plural | skulduggeries |
|---|---|
| alternative form | sculduggery |
| alternative form | scullduggery |
| alternative form | skullduggery |
Origin of skulduggery
An alteration of Scots sculduddery, sculdudrie (“adultery, unchaste behaviour; obscenity, lewdness”), of long-uncertain origin (probably a euphemism). Relation to skull is speculative at best and likely folk etymology. The American spelling skullduggery is in keeping with terms such as skillful and willful.
Words formed from skulduggery
Questions about skulduggery
- What does skulduggery mean?
- Skulduggery means a devious device or trick.
- What is skulduggery in Tamil?
- Skulduggery in Tamil is நேர்மையற்ற நடத்தை. See Skulduggery meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use skulduggery in a sentence?
- But in the writing, I prudently had changed the plot away from all the skulduggery I knew about, or suspected, or had heard about.
- What part of speech is skulduggery?
- Skulduggery is a noun.
- How do you pronounce skulduggery?
- Skulduggery is pronounced /skʌlˈdʌɡəɹi/ (UK).
- What is the plural of skulduggery?
- The plural of skulduggery is skulduggeries.
Words near skulduggery in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: skulduggery (page history and authors); skulduggery (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); skulduggery (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); skulduggery (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-skulduggery.ogg.
Cite this entry: “skulduggery.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/skulduggery. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.