a. [f. TRICK sb. or v. + -SOME.]
1. Given to playing tricks; = TRICKY a. 1.
1648. Church-lands not to be sold, 48. The Pope had made … the necessity,… that he might fleece the Clergy; which that just Councel well weighing,… made him finde some other tricksom way, to salve his necessity.
1761. Antiq., in Ann. Reg., 169/2. The Dracs, supposed to be malicious, or at least tricksome demons.
1821. New Monthly Mag., III. 555/2. Mr. Kemble was often artificial; but all his art was employed on those passages where Mr. Kean is merely tricksome.
1858. Lytton, What will He do? X. v. I have been a tricksome shifty vagrant.
2. Playful, sportive, frolicsome.
1815. J. Scott, Vis. Paris (ed. 2), I. ii. 17. Some ladies flowing shawls … and tricksome gait, bade our young gentlemen prepare their compliments in a new language.
1824. Examiner, 107/2. A tricksome youth full of mischievous merriment.
1832. L. Hunt, Poems, To J. H., 27. My tricksome Puck.
1870. F. Jacox, Rec. Recluse, I. xii. 249. Leigh Hunt has pictured Handel, with all his sublimities, and even his delicacies and tricksome graces, as a ‘gross kind of jovial fellow.’
b. Of music.
1820. L. Hunt, Indicator, No. 60 (1822), II. 60. The most tricksome harmonies and accompaniments of Mozart and Beethoven.
1822. Examiner, 266/1. The situations are often too serious, and the devotion too solemn, to allow of tricksome passages.
