Word of the Day

prestidigitation \pres-tih-dij-ih-TAY-shuhn\, noun:

1. Performance of or skill in performing magic with the hands; sleight of hand.
2. Manual dexterity in the execution of tricks; sleight of hand; legerdemain.
3. A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.

"He was the man who had sat alone in a room for hundreds and hundreds of hours, his fingers manipulating cards and coins until he had learned and could perfectly reproduce every form of prestidigitation found in books of magic lore." -- Brian Moore, The Magician's Wife

"In his new work the magic is in the storyteller's prestidigitation as the stories pass from character to character and voice to voice, and the realism seems Homeric."--D. J. R. Bruckner, "A Storyteller For the War That Won't End," New York Times, April 3, 1990

"It all came about less through engineering skill than through political prestidigitation." --Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water