One of my favorite quotes is fro Sir Walter Scott: Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive! In essence, flimflammery is all about deceit. In fact, the noun flimflam is defined as a trick or deception in the form of a swindle or confidence game that entails expert-level persuasion techniques or manipulation on the part of the person perpetrating the deceit. Flimflam, as a verb, means to trick, deceive, swindle or cheat someone, as in cheating someone out of their life savings. Flimflammery has a number of synonyms which provide the nuances any writer would need to consider if they want to use this great word in their writing.
Lie
The verb to lie means to make an false statement with the intent of deceiving someone or to create a false impression with the intent of misleading someone. The Thesaurus lists the following synonyms for lying: falsehood, falsity, untruth, mendacity, prevarication, fib, taradiddle, flam, a crock, fiction, pious fiction, legal fiction, story, trumped up story, yarn, tale, fairy tale, ghost story, farfetched story, tall tale, cock and bull story, fish story, exaggeration, half truth, stretching of the truth, white lie, pack of lies
Humbug
Humbug, as a noun, is something intended to deceive such as a hoax or a fraud, a person claiming to be someone else (an imposter), nonsense, rubbish, a pretense, or a deception. the verb humbug means to deceive or trick someone, or to practice deception or trickery. As an interjection (think Ebenezer Scrooge here), humbug is used as an expression of disbelief or disgust. Synonyms for humbug listed in the Thesaurus are: humbuggery, bunk, bunkum, hooey, hoke, hokum, bosh, bull, crap, blarney, smoke and mirrors, claptrap, moonshine, eyewash, hogwash, gammon, jiggery-pokery
Deception
Deception is a nouns meaning the use of deceit, the state of being deceived, a ruse or a trick. Synonyms from the thesaurus include calculated deception, deceptiveness, subterfuge, gimmickry, trickiness, falseness, fallaciousness, fallacy, self deception, wishful thinking, willful misconception, vision, hallucination, phantasm, mirage, delusion, delusiveness, illusion, deceiving, victimization, dupery, bamboozlement, hoodwinking, swindling, defrauding, conning, fooling, befooling, tricking, kidding, putting on, spoofing, bluffing, circumvention, overreaching, outwitting, ensnarement, entrapment, enmeshment, entanglement
Deceive
Deceive is a verbe meaning to cause someone to believe something that isn't true, to mislead, to catch someone by guile, to ensnare someone, to practice deceit, or to give a false impression. The synonyms for deceive in the Thesaurus consist of the following list: gyp, clip, scam, rope in, hose, shave, beat, rook, dipsy-doodle, do a number on, hustle, screw, have, pull something, pull a trick or stunt, give the business, ramp, stick, sting, burn, gouge, chisel, hocus, hocus-pocus, play or take for a sucker, make a patsy of , do, run a game on, slicker, take for a ride
Caprice
Finally, caprice - a noun - means an spontaneous change of mind, an inclination to change one's mind, or a unexpected or unpredictable deed, change, a or series of changes or actions. The Thesaurus synonyms for caprice are listed as follows: whim, humor, whimsy, freak, whim-wham, fancy, fantasy, conceit, notion, toy, freakish inspiration, crazy idea, fantastic notion, fool notion, harebrained idea, vagary, fad, craze, passing fancy, quirck, crank, kink, maggot in the brain, bee in one’s bonnet, flea in one’s nose. In the case of caprice, someone may well be deceived - or at least feel that they have been deceived - though the person acting out the caprice did not intend to deceive the other person. The key here is the lack of intent.
Clearly, there are many ways that a writer can get the point across that a bit of flimflammery is occurring - or has occurred. It can be shown easily with the use of any of these words or their synonyms. Have fun with this one.
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