skullduggery

Noun

skulduggery (countable and uncountable, plural skulduggeries)

1. (countable) 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

   Synonyms:

   ruse, stratagem, subterfuge

2. (uncountable) 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...

   Synonyms:

   dishonesty, jiggery-pokery, subterfuge, thugduggery, trickery, underhandedness, unscrupulousness

   Antonyms:

   honesty, probity