How to Use sleight of hand in a Sentence

sleight of hand

noun phrase
  • This isn't the first time Swift has done some hairstyling sleight of hand on the red carpet.
    Kara Nesvig, Allure, 1 Dec. 2023
  • And that's the kind of sleight of hand No Labels is doing here.
    ABC News, 16 July 2023
  • In the view of critics, that success is more like sleight of hand.
    Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Feb. 2024
  • Is that a smooth creative sleight of hand, or is the movie cheating on us?
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2023
  • Sports, in this telling, is being used as a distraction, a sleight of hand, a trick of the light.
    Rory Smith, New York Times, 9 June 2023
  • In a series that plays with sleight of hand, the base jump is a genuine magic trick.
    Jordan Crucchiola, Vulture, 4 Mar. 2024
  • Stan, already adept at card tricks and sleight of hand, quickly puts this knowledge to work.
    Vanessa Armstrong, The Atlantic, 17 June 2024
  • Krejci played the game at his own pace, seeing plays and making them with sleight of hand and deft touch.
    Jim McBride, BostonGlobe.com, 14 Aug. 2023
  • Deadheads showed up for the band’s serendipitous set lists and for Jerry Garcia’s sleight of hand.
    The New Yorker, 3 July 2023
  • This clever sleight of hand paints antisemitism as justice.
    Julia Jassey, New York Daily News, 20 Feb. 2024
  • And for 60 minutes on Sunday, the 49ers defense’s job is to find a way to limit the Houdini of Missouri’s pigskin sleight of hand.
    Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 10 Feb. 2024
  • The marvel is that this new hybrid face moves in real time on your screen, the sleight of hand nearly undetectable.
    Kaitlyn Greenidge, Harper's BAZAAR, 21 Apr. 2023
  • His sleight of hand is his ability to cloak even his bleakest moments in uplift or a hook.
    Owen Myers, EW.com, 8 July 2023
  • There’s this seamless quality of sort of sleight of hand … or something pulling off these layers of who Buddy is.
    Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2023
  • The optics are not good Matt: Another rhetorical sleight of hand.
    Adam Feuerstein and Matthew Herper, STAT, 31 July 2023
  • Taylor Swift is one such mane magician, showing off a little hairstyling sleight of hand on the red carpet at the premiere of her Eras tour movie.
    Kara Nesvig, Allure, 12 Oct. 2023
  • The sleight of hand that allowed the imposter site xn--eepass-vbb[.]info to appear as ķeepass[.]info is an encoding scheme known as punycode.
    Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 18 Oct. 2023
  • On a mild springlike evening the string of amber orbs appeared as if by magic, a celestial sleight of hand that would in the coming weeks make headlines across the nation.
    Laura Daniella Sepulveda, The Arizona Republic, 17 Feb. 2024
  • When the subject is not the movies but matters of the Middle East, the consequences of this sleight of hand are far graver than some dubious promotional puffery.
    Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic, 5 Feb. 2024
  • Through these horological sleights of hand, the watchmaker was able to bolster the new model’s power reserve to an impressive six days, a full day more than the the DB28 Kind of Blue.
    Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 29 Aug. 2023
  • Achieving the governing partnership required some sleight of hand by Ramaphosa.
    Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, 19 June 2024
  • They’re only brought together by an accountant’s sleight of hand.
    WIRED, 14 Sep. 2023
  • The title refers to a sleight of hand, a trick performed by a magician, but the vanishing in this image involves cannibalism.
    Jenna Wortham, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2023
  • The drilling makes an almighty muddy mess, but when all is said and done, the more than 2,000 boreholes planned for the campus will be undetectable, despite performing an impressive sleight of hand.
    Cara Buckley, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2024
  • For those that like to see behind the curtain, the movement’s 21-karat gold central rotor and its horological sleights of hand can be seen through the transparent caseback.
    Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 2 Jan. 2024
  • Calabresi’s hand-wringing on Thomas’ behalf also engages in sleight of hand.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 10 Jan. 2024
  • The suspects then left the store with the watches and the $2,000 sleight of hand, with the investigation continuing and police requesting a copy of the security video.
    Thomas Jewell, cleveland, 28 July 2023
  • No, but that would have taken some extremely nifty architectural sleight of hand consider the number of rooms.
    Nick Scott, Robb Report, 11 July 2023
  • That mathematical sleight of hand meant that eCash was provably secure.
    Andy Greenberg, Ars Technica, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Startups in the field of artificial intelligence are the new masters of illusion; algorithms are the new sleight of hand.
    David Segal, BostonGlobe.com, 8 July 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sleight of hand.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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