Sunday Word: Legerdemain

[sallymn]

legerdemain [lej-er-duh-meyn]

noun:
1 sleight of hand
2 a display of skill or adroitness

Examples:

In Open Eye's itsy-bitsy performing space, Sass has constructed a set filled with tricks and gimmicks: old-fashioned bulletin boards animate themselves, objects move on their own, characters appear from and disappear to unexpected places. Some of the legerdemain is how'd-they-do-that pieces of stage magic, while other bits are visual distraction. (Dominic P Papatola , Theater review: These 'Red Shoes' can't be tied with a bow. And that's a good thing , Twin Cities, March 2017)

Poirot reacts to all this legerdemain with a disbelieving scowl, even when he can't fully explain the hair-raising tricks his eyes and ears are playing on him. (Justin Chang, Review: With 'A Haunting in Venice,' Kenneth Branagh's Agatha Christie series hits its stride , Los Angeles Times, September 2023)

The magician on stage is all-powerful to the mesmerised audience, pulling the rabbit out of his hat, sawing pretty ladies in half, making members in the audience disappear and a host of other tricks in his legerdemain (Ravi Shankar, Why poll Houdini Prashant Kishor isn't a neta, The New Indian Express, February 2022)

Every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception - chattering away all the while - but always, just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. (Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad)

He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. (Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera)

(click to enlarge)
Origin:

early 15c, 'conjuring tricks, sleight of hand,' from Old French léger de main 'quick of hand,' literally 'light of hand.' Léger 'light' in weight (Old French legier, 12c) is from Latin levis 'light' (from PIE root legwh- 'not heavy, having little weight'). Main 'hand' is from Latin manus (from PIE root man- 'hand'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

In Middle French, folks who were clever enough to fool others with fast-fingered illusions were described as leger de main, literally 'light of hand'. English speakers condensed that phrase into a noun when they borrowed it in the 15th century and began using it as an alternative to the older sleight of hand. (That term for dexterity or skill in using one's hands makes use of sleight, an old word from Middle English that derives from an Old Norse word meaning 'sly.') In modern times, a feat of legerdemain can even be accomplished without using your hands, as in, for example, 'an impressive bit of financial legerdemain.' (Merriam-Webster)