statecraft
(ˈsteɪtkrɑːft, -æ-)
[f. state n. + craft.]
The art of conducting state affairs; statesmanship. Sometimes with sinister implication: Crafty or overreaching statesmanship.
| 1642 Fuller Holy & Prof. St. iv. v. 263 Some plead that dissembling is Lawfull in the State-craft, upon the presupposition that men must meet with others which dissemble. 1719 Oldisworth Callipædia iv. 582 Well verst in State-Craft, the mysterious Trade, They know to gild and paint a pious Fraud. 1745 Fielding True Patriot No. 9 ¶16 Nor can I help observing..another piece of state craft..; for while we sent for this troop of singers into England, we left several troops of our soldiers abroad. 1798 W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. V. 352 To avoid a civil, wage a foreign war, is an old adage of profligate state-craft. 1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. xviii. IV. 163 A double treason, such as would have been thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the great Italian politicians of the fifteenth century. 1861 Tulloch Engl. Purit. I. 2 The English Reformation..was also the creature of statecraft, and royal policy. 1873 Symonds Grk. Poets i. 16 The men who rose to the greatest eminence in statecraft are to be reckoned among the primitive philosophers of Greece. 1886 Manch. Exam. 18 Jan. 5/5 It savours more of statecraft than of statesmanship. 1887 Lowell Democracy etc. 34 Statecraft is no longer looked upon as a mystery, but as a business. |
So state-craftsman, an expert in statecraft.
| 1809–10 Coleridge Friend II. 185 Whatever study or doctrine bears upon..a certain Phantom of a State in toto, which is every where and no where, this shall be deemed most useful and wise; and all else is the state-craftsman's scorn. 1914 Wells in Engl. Rev. Jan. 202 State-craftsmen sat with their historical candles burning. |