http://www.wordnik.com/word-of-the-day
thimblerig
Definitions
■(noun) A sleight-of-hand trick played with three small cups shaped like thimbles, and a small ball or pea. The ball or pea is put on a table and covered with one of the cups. The operator then begins moving the cups about, offering to bet that no one can tell under which cup the pea lies. The one who bets is seldom allowed to win.
■(noun) To cheat by means of thimblerig, or sleight of hand.
Notes
■'Thimblerig' is similar to 'three-card monte,' which is 'a confidence game in which the victim, or mark, is tricked into betting a sum of money that they can find the money card.'
Examples
■“In these circumstances, and smarting as I was under the recollection of recent defeat, it is not strange that I thought I detected the old political ruse of dressing the wolf in sheep's clothing, of using handsome pledges as a mask to deceive the gullible, and that I assumed that this scholarly amateur in politics was being used for their own purposes by masters and veterans in the old game of thimblerig.”
■“And yet every day one saw more distinctly that they were the pea in the thimblerig of life, the hub of a universe which, to the approbation of the majority they represented, they were fast making uninhabitable.”
■“Whatever their morality may be, pimps and prostitutes, confidence men and thimblerig artists are probably among the best practical psychologists in our society in that they are almost infallible judges of human character and personality: they really have a basic understanding of what motivates many people, and they didn't learn it from textbooks.”
■“'Great Barnums?' says I. 'You're a ringer for a circus thimblerig man.'”
No comments:
Post a Comment