ruse

CEFRC1

/ɹuːz/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
noun
A trick used to deceive someone and achieve a goal.
02
noun
Extra detail
An action intended to deceive; a trick.

Examples

All the sweet talk was just a ruse to get her into bed.
Tom had suspected that it was a ruse.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 5
Parts of speech: 2
Citations: 5
Synonyms: 2

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

Cunning, guile, trickery.
A turning or doubling back, especially of animals to get out of the way of hunting dogs.

verb

Extra meaning

To deceive or trick using a ruse.

More examples

In context

It could just be a ruse.
Near-synonyms: ploy, stratagem
Anyway, no man can escape the woman he considers too much rused for him: tear her down or run away toward her if he can't meet her head-and-hind on.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The spy used a clever blank to get the secret documents from the safe.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

[H]e [Bertrand du Guesclin] had great natural cunning, that half-savage quality, was full of ruse and trick in war, he was contemptuous towards the high noblesse, but gentle to the poor, and generous to his friends.
1873, G[eorge] W[illiam] Kitchin, “The Deeds of Charles V, ‘the Wise.’ a.d. 1360–1380.”, in A History of France down to the Year 1453 (Clarendon Press Series), Oxford: At the University Press, →OCLC, pages 456–457
A French privateer operating under an English commission raided Massacre Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay in 1710, robbing its warehouse of thousands of deerskins and other pelts, as well as of naval stores. They took the small place by ruse.
2005, Benerson Little, “Houses, Towns, and Cities Sacked: The Sea Rover as a Soldier”, in The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630–1730, Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, →ISBN; 1st paperback edition, Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007, →ISBN, page 190
Anyway, no man can escape the woman he considers too much rused for him: tear her down or run away toward her if he can't meet her head-and-hind on.
1956, Herbert Gold, “Then Visited from the Jungle to Jungles”, in The Man who was Not with It, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC; republished as The Man who was Not with It (Second Edition Books), Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1987, →ISBN, page 37
And, in a way, s/he is already told, and what s/he him/herself is telling will not undo the fact that somewhere else s/he is told, but it will "ruse" with this; it will offer a variant in the form and even in the story.
1985, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean-Loup Thébald, translated by Wlad Godzich, Just Gaming (Theory and History of Literature; 20), Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, published 1999, →ISBN, page 41
Even at that, the most plausible way of understanding, "the text deconstructs itself" is surely that the text signals the itinerary of its desire to be "about something," and that this itinerary must ruse over the open-endedness of the field of meaning; at a certain point, it is possible to locate the moment when the rusing reveals itself as the structure of unresolvable self-cancellings.
1998, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Finding Feminist Readings: Dante–Yeats”, in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 21

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Origin

noun

From Middle English rūse (“evasive movements of a pursued animal; circuitous course taken by a hunter to pursue a game animal”), from Old French rëuse, ruse (“evasive movements of a pursued animal; trickery”) (modern French ruse (“trick, ruse; cunning, guile”)), from ruser (“to use cunning, to be crafty, beguile”), possibly from Latin rursus (“backward; on the contrary; again, in return”) or Latin recūsāre, from recūsō (“to decline, refuse; to object to, protest, reject”). Doublet of recuse and rouse in the latter case. The verb is derived from the noun. Compare Middle French ruser (“to use cunning, to be crafty, beguile”); see further above.

Deep Dive

noun

verb

More examples

Related

Quick test

The spy used a clever blank— to get the secret documents from the safe.

Nearby

Origin

noun

The spy used a clever blank to get the secret documents from the safe.