switcheroo

noun

1. (Canada, US, informal)A sneaky, unexpected, or clever swap or exchange.

   “In a corporate merger, it is usually the big company that buys a smaller one. Last week Boston's up & coming Tracerlab, Inc. pulled a switcheroo. Tracerlab, which grossed only $1,700,000 last year, bought the much bigger ($8,000,000 gross) Kelley-Koett Mfg. Co.”

   “When you are dealing with American presidents, you always have to watch for the old switcheroo. Lyndon Johnson opposed Barry Goldwater's "extremism" on Vietnam, then proceeded to try to bomb Hanoi back into the stone age. Richard Nixon opposed price and wage controls, until he suddenly adopted them.”

   “Elsewhere, it’s a ‘switcheroo’ ([Kevin] Kelly’s word, not mine) that will lend technology the working status of a vital force that, like ‘nature’, operates outside the reach of social imperatives.”

   “The Manhattan Theater Club has pulled a switcheroo, delaying a planned production of Gone Home, by John Corwin, and replacing it with Four, by the 26-year-old playwright Christopher Shinn.”

verb

1. (transitive, uncommon)To swap or exchange surreptitiously.

   “Another day, the magic wind came and switcherooed Katie into a hairdresser named Sparkle.”