Sleight (Hastings' Dictionary)

Eph 4>< 'By the sleight of men' ((?v TT) Ku,iti(f [ Tiscli. WH Kvj3i<f] Twv dvOpunroii', lit. ' by tile (iiee-playing of men,' from avjios, a cube, die). Tindale translates ' by the wylynes of men,' which is tlie meaning of AV ' sleight.' It is of the same root as ' sly,' as if for slt/th = ' slyness.' Cf.

Ridley, Works, 31, 'The slcigiits and shifts which craft and wit can invent'; Tymme's Calvin's Gencsii, 5<)9, ' Nowe, seeing a lye is damnable of it selfe, therein she sinned the more, that she durst iiso such decciveable slightes in so holy a matter.' But the word properly means a device, and may be used in a good sense, as Udall's Erasmus' Paraph, i.

lOG, ' If this invencion and sleight be brought unto your presidente, we will perswade liyni, and deliver you from all daunger of this matter'; Elyot, Govemour, i. 173, 'It hath ben Bene that the waiker persone by the sleight of wrastlyng, hath overthrowen the stronger. We Btill have the phrase 'sleight of hand.'

The adverb sleightly is used in tlie Preface to AV, 'Now, when the father of their Church, who gladly would healc the soarc of thedaugliter of his pcoide softly and sli'ightly, and make the best of It, findeth so great fault with (litm for their oddes and jarring, we hope the children have no great cause to vaunt of their uniformitie.' There is no connexion cither in origin or mean- ing with 'slight,' 'slightly,' which means originally •flat,' 'smuuth.' J.Hastings.