skulduggery

noun

1. (countable)A devious device or trick.

   “A private company cannot get away with a skulduggery of that sort. Once it has paid out its money for taxes, it cannot reach into the public treasury and get it back and apply it on its amortization account.”

   “And you, O student, might do worse than to investigate the assorted sculduggeries of this obscure trio: […]”

   “The reports in his briefase had no bearing on war, peace, the dope traffic, the hydrogen bomb, or any of the other international skulduggeries that he associated with pursuers, men in trench coats, and wet sidewalks.”

   “What exhibition of rapaciousness, race prejudice and political spoliation could be cheaper, commoner, or meaner? These are the little tyrannies and petty skullduggeries that make bitter the relations between the races.”

2. (uncountable)Dishonest, underhanded, or unscrupulous activities or behaviour.

   “And I have another reason which I will express to my St Paul friends, and that is, that they have always been controlled in their political action here by a class of men who have always some traps set for the country members—by men who are always up to this border ruffian kind of trickery—this kind of skullduggery, as it is called in Minnesota. And now St. Paul allows herself to be controlled by these same border ruffian politicians.”

   “How did Hercules (Herc. of antiquity) slay the Hydrant and cleanse the stables of Oregon? Did it all by main force, didn't he? Power? Shenanigan? Skulduggery? Of course he did.”

   “[…] I discovered this particular one to be merely a shallow recess in the limestone, nowhere reëntrant to a distance of over forty feet, of the general proportions of a tin oven, and transacting an immense business of mystery (or what they call, as far west as this, "Shenandigan" and "Scullduggery") with those who gape at it from below, on the capital of a dark, overgrown portal, as big as the cave itself.”

   “Mr. BURNS wanted to hear from the gentleman from Logan on his amendment, to see whether there was any "sculduggery" about it.”

   “The crew manager collects all the money from his workers. They operate in more or less close formation, with the manager lurking around the edges, riding herd in his car or walking between cover points. Thus, the solicitor has little chance for skullduggery. His receipts are numbered and he has to account for them.”