ruse
verbEtymology
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.
1
To deceive or trick using a ruse.
- 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:
3 more examples
- 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:
- In all types, manners and forms, empire “bilderz” come forward rusing out their favorite lines and spew. A sale just means yer not bein' gouged as much, doesn't it?2009, Lee Kierig, “Ain’t No School, Quite Like, No Skool”, in Where, is Infinite Love? Public Welfare, Human Responsibility and Sustainability of Earth: A Letter to Humanity, New York, N.Y.: Strategic Book Publishing, →ISBN, page 225:
- Moreover, since we have now reached an extreme point in the development of consciousness, and know our own selves through and through, no 'ultimate self-doubt' remains which would allow us to ruse with death – as when, in Pascal's wager, it is the doubt about the afterlife which determines the choice.2012, Paul de Man, “Mallarmé (1960)”, in Martin McQuillan, editor, The Post-Romantic Predicament, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, part II (Igitur), page 73:
2
Hobbies, Hunting, Lifestyle Archaic, Rare Of an animal: to turn or double back to elude hunters or their hunting dogs.
- And he [the hart] fleeth then mightily and far from the hounds, that is to say he hath gone a great way from them, then he will go into the stank, and will soil therein once or twice in all the stank and then he will come out again by the same way that he went in, and then he shall ruse again the same way that he came (the length of) a bow shot or more, and then he shall ruse out of the way, for to stall or squatt to rest him, and that he doeth for he knoweth well that the hounds shall come by the fues [footing] into the stank where he was.c. 1425, Edward, Second Duke of York [i.e., Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York], “Of the Hart and His Nature”, in W[illia]m A[dolf] Baillie-Grohman, F[lorence] Baillie-Grohman, editors, The Master of Game by Edward, Second Duke of York: The Oldest English Book on Hunting, London: Chatto & Windus, published 1909, →OCLC, page 33:
- With these whelps [the hunting dogs] who know the way but are in danger of being baffled by the rusing stag, the hunter sends the reliable old harre (perseverance). He is indispensable, as he has often confronted the stag at bay.1974, Marcelle Thiébaux, “Medieval Allegories of the Love Chase”, in The Stag of Love: The Chase in Medieval Literature, Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, published 2014, →ISBN, page 190:
2 more examples
- In the parallel hunt of Octovian, the hart has rused and momentarily escaped. With the death of White, the Knight's heart is wounded and his life is endangered but he escapes for a time as does the hart, though the hunter Death will ultimately be successful in both cases.1988, “Hunt”, in Jean-Charles Seigneuret, editor, Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs, volumes 1 (A–J), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 642:
- Sometimes the stag would throw the hounds off the scent by a series of clever ruses—for example, by retracing a part of his path and leaping dramatically in one direction. […] Ultimately, the stag would tire, and its signals of exhaustion (short rusing runs, downwind flight, and the narrowing of the toe prints) would be evident to the trackers.1991, Thomas S. Henricks, “Sport in the Later Middle Ages”, in Disputed Pleasures: Sport and Society in Preindustrial England (Contributions to the Study of World History; no. 28), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 46: