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e matters, to his advantage or benefit. -- To play off, to affect; to feign; to practice artifice. -- To play upon. (a) To make sport of; to deceive. Art thou alive Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight. Shak.

Cunning; using artifice; politic; artful. "Ill-meaning politician lords." Milton.

llful or artful management; dexterity in contrivance or the use of means; art; stratagem; artifice; plot; -- usually in a bad sense. [Obs.] Bacon. He sought to have that by practice which he could not by prayer. Sir P. Sidney.

To evade the point in question by artifice, play upon words, caviling, or by raising any insignificant or impertinent question or point; to trifle in argument or discourse; to equivocate.

An artifice; trick; stratagem; wile; fraund; deceit. Ruse de guerre ( Etym: [F.], a stratagem of war.

One who, or that which, shifts; one who plays tricks or practices artifice; a cozener. 'T was such a shifter that, if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down. Milton.

A trick; an artifice; an evasion. The gifts of nature are beyond all shame and shuffles. L'Estrange.

Not given to artifice, stratagem, or duplicity; undesigning; sincere; true. Full many fine men go upon my score, as simple as I stand here, and I trust them. Marston. Must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue Byron. To be simple is to be great. Emerson.

An artful trick; sly artifice; a feat so dexterous that the manner of performance escapes observation. The world hath many subtle sleights. Latimer.

An artifice or trick in war for deceiving the enemy; hence, in general, artifice; deceptive device; secret plot; evil machination. Fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Shak. Those oft are stratagems which error seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. Pope.

Of or pertaining to strategy; effected by artifice. -- Stra*te"gic*al*ly, adv. Strategic line (Mil.), a line joining strategic points. -- Strategic point (Mil.), any point or region in the theater or warlike operations which affords to its possessor an advantage over his opponent, as a mountain pass, a junction of ri…

The use of stratagem or artifice.

That to which one resorts for escape or concealment; an artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument, or to justify opinions or conduct; a shift; an evasion. Affect not little shifts and subterfuges, to avoid the force of an argument. I. Watts. By a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render this posi…

Slyness in design; artifice; guile; a cunning design or artifice; a trick; subtlety. O full of all subtility and all mischief. Acts xiii. 10.

To cheat defraud grossly, or with deliberate artifice; as, to swindle a man out of his property. Lammote . . . has swindled one of them out of three hundred livres. Carlyle.

frauds grossly; one who makes a practice of defrauding others by imposition or deliberate artifice; a cheat.

To obtain possession of by force or artifice; to get the custody or control of; to reduce into subjection to one's power or will; to capture; to seize; to make prisoner; as, to take am army, a city, or a ship; also, to come upon or befall; to fasten on; to attack; to seize; -- said of a disease, misfortune, or the like…

execution; technique. They illustrate the method of nature, not the technic of a manlike Artificer. Tyndall.

A mechanic or artificer; esp., one whose livelihood depends upon the labor of his hands. [U.S.] Burrill.

To draw by persuasion, artifice, or the like; to attract by stratagem; to entice; to allure. [Obs.] If but a dozen French Were there in arms, they would be as a call To train ten thousand English to their side. Shak. O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note. Shak. This feast, I'll gage my life, Is but a plot to tr…