Etymology and History
Sleight, meaning dexterity or deceptiveness, comes from the Old Norse slœgð, meaning cleverness, cunning, slyness. Sleight of hand is often mistakenly written as slight of hand or slide of hand. Slight descends from slettr, meaning plain, flat, even, smooth, level.
Seneca the Younger, in the 1st century CE, famously compared rhetoric techniques and illusionist techniques.
Read more about this topic: Sleight Of Hand
Famous quotes containing the words etymology and/or history:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)