prestidigitationn.

1841 Times 7 June 4/2 (advt.) The great Original, the Father of Modern Magi, will perform his thousand feats of incomprehensible prestidigitation ambidexterous.

1859 F. C. L. Wraxall tr. J. E. Robert-Houdin Mem. viii. 166–7 The learning of the conjuror—I beg pardon, prestidigitator... This word, as well as Prestidigitation, due to the same author, were soon seized upon by Jules de Rovère's rivals.

1887 R. L. Stevenson Memories & Portraits xi. 188 This sort of prestidigitation is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-room queens.

1927 Amer. Mercury Jan. 124/1 A dramatist like Hauptmann..contrives an enormous effect by laying hold of truth and letting it find its way to the stage through the fancy of an artist rather than through the prestidigitation of a dramatist.

1944 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 17 Jan. 1/3 Card tricks, disappearing rabbit gadgets, mystifying goldfish bowls and all manner of aids to prestidigitation.

1970 J. McPhee Crofter & Laird 123 ‘Strathcona’ was mere linguistic prestidigitation—another way of saying ‘Glencoe’.

1995 Entertainm. Weekly 16 June 40/1 With all of these boutiques of electronic prestidigitation now available to studios, it's not uncommon for a director to beef up an explosion with digitally simulated shock waves, make a sky cloudy or clear, [etc.].

2004 Smithsonian June 109/1 Jay is perhaps the world's greatest sleight-of-hand artist as well as a leading scholar of prestidigitation and illusion.