[a. F. chicane-r ‘to wrangle or pettifog it; to spoyle or perplex a cause with craftie and litigious pleading; also to write a verie fast hand’ (Cotgr.).]
1. intr. To employ chicanery; to use subterfuges and tricks in litigation, or quibbles, cavils, shifts, and petty artifices in debate or action; to quibble, cavil.
a. 1672. Wren, in Gutch, Coll. Cur., I. 252. At the Treaty of the Isle of Wight, while they stood chicaning.
1706. trans. Dupin’s Eccl. Hist. 16th C., II. III. xviii. 250. We ought not to chicane upon the Word Worship.
1748. Chesterf., Lett., II. 81. Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about the motives.
1793. Gouv. Morris, in Sparks, Life & Writ. (1832), II. 360. The Courts chicane very much here.
a. 1797. Walpole, Mem. Geo. II., III. 116. Chicaning upon it rather than attacking it openly.
1817. Jas. Mill, Brit. India, II. V. vii. 604. Mr. Hastings … chicaning about the quality of the Rajah, or his dignity and rank.
1840. J. S. Mill, Diss. & Disc., II. 168. Chicaning on texts instead of invoking principles.
2. trans. a. To quibble over, cavil at (a thing). b. To overreach by chicanery. c. To enter into litigation with (properly French). d. To chicane away: to get rid of by chicanery; so to chicane any one into, or out of a thing, etc.
1777. Burke, Address to King, Wks. IX. 186. The very possibility of publick agency … has been evaded and chicaned away.
1824. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 408. Those who read … to understand, and not to chicane it.
1835. Blackw. Mag., XXXVII. 359. Their ingenuity in having chicaned the landlords of the north.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., V. XXI. vi. 125. By way of codicil, Austria agrees not to chicane him in regard to Anspach-Baireuth.
1863. ‘Ouida,’ Held in Bondage (1870), 31. She could not … chicane me into admitting the promise of marriage.
